by Jan Michael Yip

Created on: September 16, 2009   Last Updated: September 18, 2009

It's been almost six months since I decided to quit my customer service job and focus on getting my act together as a nursing professional. So for the last 160 days or so, I was at home bumming around trying to finish some PSP game or I was bouncing from one hospital to another trying to get the latest "word" if hospital A (to Z) was hiring. Now if they weren't, the follow up questions were did they need volunteers, were they conducting trainings, do they have on the job trainings and other substantial queries I could think of just to make my visit worthwhile. Yeah I could have just called to get the information that I needed but that didn't get me anywhere the first quarter of the year when I tried to let my fingers do the walking. You get the idea that it was a tedious and grueling process and the summer heat didn't help either. I wouldn't have minded all that if I had something to show for it after, but I didn't. Some of these hospitals had train-to-hire schemes for a fee not lower than P8,000 (yes, we'll pay them to work our butts off) but even these programs were always full. I've probably submitted 7 packets containing my credentials and I've yet to receive an email or a phone call saying "not in a million years" or something to that effect.

I've learned quite a few things these past few months and the lesson that resonated so loudly is that in this time of over abundance of nurses, it's not what you know but who you know that matters in order to simply start your career. It's hard not to generalize when you can see it happening right in front of you. Nepotism and favoritism is definitely part of our culture and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. My only request to people who're able to callously get their sons, daughters or other relatives into a training program or even a position in a hospital simply because they work there or know someone who can pull some strings is to think of the people that were cut from the program or circumvented from getting a job because your son/daughter/relative TOOK it from them.

I'm currently waiting outside a huge closed door as I write this. When it opens in order to commence the process of screening train-to-hire applicants, I will find myself either taking my first step officially into my profession or once again have a slamming door in my face.

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