Medical Transcriptionists: A Solution for Jobless Nurses

Nursing Jobs |

Ivan John Uy the new chief of Commission on Information Communications Technology (CICT) proposed a solution to half a million jobless nursing graduates int he country by retooling their skills to become IT-enabled medical transcriptionists.

There is a “mismatch” between the number of new graduate nurses and current jobs available.

“Hundreds of thousands of nurses graduate annually when the demand has already shifted to knowledge-based services. That is why a lot of them are unemployed or if they work, they are underemployed as salespersons in malls.”

“Half a million graduates is a lot of untapped potential,” he says.

There are nursing graduates who pay as much as P20,000 for additional training in government and private hospitals to get better chances at being employed abroad, a hearing in the Lower House revealed on Thursday.

A three to six-month training program is enough to “retool” nursing skills and tailor-fit them to the job qualifications of medical transcriptionists, says Uy, who wants to tap the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to develop a curriculum for nurses who want to transition to medical transcriptionists.

After the TESDA training, he is looking at putting up a job fair to help employers recruit transcriptionists.

Meetings with industry groups such as Business Processing Association of the Philippines (B/PAP) are underway, says Uy, to tackle this issue and draft the country’s ICT roadmap for 2011 to 2015.

The local BPO industry posted $7.2 billion revenues in 2009, second to OFW remittances in terms of dollar sources for the country. This year, the sector is poised to grow at 25 percent to $9 billion, according to the B/PAP.

[via Fit to Post]
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