Filipino nurses bewail CGFNS ‘poor service’

In 2003, there were 13,000 Filipino nurses who availed of the services of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS). That translates to a total amount of $7.2 million in fees that were paid to CGFNS.

The number of Filipino nurses (13,000) represents more than 50% of the total number of foreign nurses worldwide who availed of the CGFNS services in 2003.

Therefore, the bulk of the income of CGFNS, a non-profit company based in Philadelphia, comes from Filipino nurses.

With this as a fact, one would think that the non-profit organization would have an operational office in the Philippines. Right?

Wrong. The truth is, the CGFNS has a one-man office in Manila with one telephone and one office computer.

“It is unfortunate that the organization is not delivering the excellent service that are due to the Filipino nurses, being the largest group of foreign nurses that utilize the services of CGFNS,” said Arthur Cantos, President of Bayani Consulting, a company based in Makati.

Cantos was one of the speakers during the 2-day Western Regional Conference of the Philippine Nurses Association of America (PNAA) in Tempe, Arizona on March 12-13, 2004.

Cantos, who himself is a Registered Nurse and worked in a hospital in San Francisco before forming his own company in Makati, said “ problems of delay, lost of documents, long turn around time and inefficient services of the CGFNS have been documented” by their office.

Mary Ann Tion, now working at St. Joseph Hospital told The Filipino American Journal that she spent P1,000.00 for telephone bills when she contacted CGFNS office in Philadelphia. Did she get any response? Full details