The Potent Lever of Toil: Nursing Development and Exportation in the Postcolonial Philippines
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Although the colonial relationship between the Philippines and the United States precipitated nurse education and migration patterns that exist today, little is known about the factors that sustained them. During the first half of the twentieth century, for example, the Philippines trained its nurse workforce primarily for domestic use. After the country's independence in 1946, however, that practice reversed. Nurse education in the Philippines was driven largely by US market demand in tandem with local messages linking work and nationalism and explicit policies to send nurses abroad. As these ideologies and practices became firmly entrenched, nurse production not only exceeded the country's numerical requirements but focused largely on preparing practitioners for the health care needs of developed nations rather than the public health needs of the indigenous population. This historical trend has important present-day ramifications for the Philippines, whose continued exodus of nurses threatens its public health.
Author: Barbara L. Brush
Institution: University of Michigan
Language: English
Subfield: Emergency Medical Services
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1964964877