Allegations of test leakages during the recent licensing examinations for nurses have polarized members of the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA).

One PNA official called up deans of Baguio’s nursing schools last week to urge them to suppress future complaints against the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) and examiners of its Board of Nursing, local PNA chapter members said in a meeting Thursday.

The school officials and chapter members from the Cordillera and Ilocos regions met to discuss legal options after agreeing to join the petition of 91 nursing graduates of Baguio universities that sought to place the examiners of the nursing board under preventive suspension.

Lawyer Cheryl Daytec-Yangot, counsel of the group and sister-in-law of one of the complainants, said they also wanted PRC to delay the release of the test results because of evidence that a nursing review center allegedly distributed documents that revealed the answers to the examinations here on June 11 and 12.

Florence Cawaon, a member of the nursing board last year and dean of the University of Baguio’s College of Nursing, said the PNA was wary of a scandal because it would jeopardize negotiations to install an American licensing center in the country.

The affidavits of three of the 91 nursing graduates said examinees wearing jackets with the seal of R.A. Gapuz Review Center shared the documents with their seat-mates on the second exam day. They said the leaked answers proved to be genuine.

School officials said wearing the jackets already violated PRC rules.

Lawyer Roderick Salazar III, counsel for the review center, denied the allegations after they received text messages that implicated them. But he declined further comment until they received a copy of the petition.

Cawaon said the copy of the alleged examination leakage was unusual because the 18-page document was a handwritten outline that provided detailed answers to test questions.

The actual PRC test sheets ask examinees to select the answer from four or five letter options.

“To cheat, it would be simpler to just provide the letters [that correspond to the right answers], but the [alleged] leak is voluminous because it gives out detailed answers,” she said.

Except for the fact that the document is handwritten, Cawaon said the alleged test leakage appears to follow the approved PRC test format.

She said she has inhibited herself from joining the PNA Baguio petition against the nursing board because of her PRC ties.

“I am confused right now because I don’t know how [the leak] could have happened. It is impossible to smuggle out the questions because all members of the nursing board are sequestered during the nights the tests are conducted,” she said.

“We are asked to house ourselves in a secure location, guarded by [National Bureau of Investigation agents] and each of us is tasked to give 300 questions to a test bank, where the final examination questions are selected and processed,” Cawaon said.

“The selected questions are downloaded into computer disks that are sealed and carried personally by PRC examiners to exam sites all over the country accompanied by NBI escorts. “They cannot access the questions until PRC releases passwords simultaneously so they can print out the test manuals before they are distributed to examinees.”


Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer (Published on page A21 of the June 26, 2006)