ANAKALUSUGAN Party-List Rep. Ray Florence Reyes has filed a bill that seeks to establish a nursing scholarship and return service program.

House Bill 6631 or the proposed Nursing Scholarship and Return Service Program Act aims to address the shortage of nurses in the country.

“Yearly, we lose hundreds of nurses who seek greener pastures elsewhere. This mass exodus of health workers greatly affects our health system causing it to collapse. No one was addressing this, and so we crafted this measure,” Reyes said.

Under the measure, the scholarship program will be open to freshmen and existing nursing students who wish to avail themselves of free tuition and school fees, allowance for books, supplies and equipment and financial assistance during internship.

In return, once the student graduates, he or she will take the board examination in one year.

For every academic year, the student will serve one and a half years in his province or municipality hospital as determined by the local government unit and confirmed by the Department of Health.

The measure also seeks to provide a pay it forward scholarship to deserving students in state universities and colleges or private higher education institutions.

“We want to provide a scholarship scheme to those who wish to take up nursing in college and pursue it as a profession, then create a return service program to pay the scholarship forward through public service. In a bigger picture, this will develop our healthcare human resource to meet the needs of our citizens and ensure adequacy in registered nurses in the country,” Reyes said.

The DOH will determine the number of nurses for every municipality or province then provide the proper integration of the scholar into the public health and medical service system.