ABSTRACT
The study focused on work performance of BSN-prepared PNP uniformed personnel in REGION V as basis for deployment. Specifically, this study identified the competencies of the BSN prepared PNP uniformed personnel; determined the work performances of the BSN prepared PNP and the non-BSN prepared PNP uniformed personnel; Infer the significant difference in the work performance between the BSN prepared PNP and the non- BSN prepared PNP uniformed personnel and proposed an enhancement training program to improve the competencies and strengthen the topmost competencies of the BSN-prepared PNP uniformed personnel. A descriptive –comparative design was used. There were total of 230 respondents, 115 BSN-prepared PNP uniformed personnel in Bicol Region and 115 for non-BSN-prepared PNP uniformed personnel in which a fish bowl technique was used for an equal chance to be selected as respondent. BSN-prepared PNP officers excel in diverse competencies like nursing knowledge, communication, and leadership, while performing on par with non-BSN colleagues. Targeted training and deployment strategies can maximize their unique skillset within the Philippine National Police.
KEYWORDS: Work Alignment, Competencies, BSN-Prepared PNP Uniformed Personnel, Deployment, Non-BSN Prepared Uniformed Personnel, Training Program, Deployment
INTRODUCTION
Nursing encompasses autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups and communities, sick or well, and in all settings. It includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of the ill, the disabled and the dying. Advocacy, promotion of a safe environment, research, participation in shaping health policy and in patient and health systems management, and education are the key nursing roles (Bartz, 2010). The ability to make someone feel physically comfortable by various means at times, and the nurses' ability to achieve or maintain health makes nursing rewarding. Often it is an uncanny, yet well-honed knack to see beyond the obvious and address, in some way, the deeper needs of the human soul, makes nursing challenging.
As nurses are looking forward to making their career in one of the fields of nursing, essential attributes of a nurse must be evident for them to succeed in whichever field of nursing they hope to push through. Nurses are known to be critical thinkers, they acquire fair interpersonal skills especially when dealing with their clientele and their significant others, and they must possess a strong background in science or mathematics (Kozier, Berman, Snyder & Erb, 2007). Moreover, a nurse, to succeed in her profession must also possess communication skills, emotional stability, empathy, flexibility, good attention to detail, interpersonal skills, physical endurance, problem-solving skills, quick response and respect.
In the past few months, the dramatic surge of students in the nursing course has caused the flooding of displaced nurses in our country. At present, many graduate nurses try to apply for any position that would ensure employability even if it would mean a job mismatch. According to former Board of Nursing Chairman Sto. Tomas (2008), from 1952 to date, the country has so far registered or licensed 480, 992 Filipino nurses out of the 523, 272 who actually passed the Philippine Nurse Licensure Examinations. The Alliance of Young Nurse Leaders and Advocates International reported in a January 2011 statement before the Senate that about 200,000 estimates underemployment among nurses to be at just under 300,000 (Dioquino, 2012).
In Philippines, majority of the graduate nurses of the recent batches can be found in call centers other industries like the Philippine National Police (PNP). Graduate nurses, fresh graduates, board passers and non-passers are attracted to the opportunity that the PNP would offer them since nurses can avail of so-called lateral entry and acquire a rank once qualified. However, new entrant nurses are displaced in various divisions of PNP, because the nature of job is far from what they had been trained to do in their baccalaureate degrees. Not all nurses who enter the PNP are given the opportunity to be employed as nurse or even work in the medical division of the PNP. In Region 5, majority of the 150 BSN-prepared PNP uniformed personnel, if not most, assigned to the varied divisions of the PNP whose jobs are not closely related to nursing. Those nurses or nursing graduates who are lucky enough to be assigned to women's desk are faced with the challenge not just to apply their nursing skills and their critical thinking but also to attend to the evidences laid down by complainant, or analyze if these evidence are for a court case. Also, not all assigned the women's desk are nurses; that is why there is difficulty in assessing the congruence of the verbal and the non-verbal cues displayed by the complainant. This study purports to offer a fast track in crime investigation particularly in far flung areas where crime occurrences had increased dramatically in the past years. This research study would provide an avenue for the utilization of the skills of the nurses in the field of forensic and evidence gathering and prevention. Moreover, enhancing the competencies of the BSN-prepared PNP uniformed personnel would improve the performance of the PNP as an organization as a whole. Thus, the PNP should develop a series of training courses on enhancing the competencies of the PNP uniformed personnel most specially the BSN-prepared ones The effectiveness of these training courses can improve the efficiency of the PNP uniformed personnel.
The rapid change in technology, knowledge explosion and the increased and complex health care demands challenge the nurse's knowledge, technical competence, interpersonal skills and commitment. Nurses work at each level of the health care system, have varied role, and are constantly in contact with people. Dealing with this dynamism and responsibility requires nurses to have knowledge and skills of management. It becomes apparent that the leadership needed to get work done through people is increasingly important for nurses to dispose their professional performance. Furthermore, proactive leaders who had a vision and could motivate associates to work toward common goals could help organization survive and even thrive during rapid change.
More so, modern policing has placed new emphasis on nontraditional skills for officers. The PNP is moving away from the traditional reactive model of policing and toward community and intelligence-based problem-solving models. These models see problems and information analysis rather than individual crimes or criminals as the basis of police work. The PNP as a whole and individual police officers seek to reduce crime and the fear of crime through identifying problems and facilitating community partnerships to solve them.
To meet community policing missions, the PNP today hire in the spirit of service. Here is where the nurses and the nursing graduates who possessed the competencies to meet the objectives of the criminal justice system are needed. As nursing graduates, they possess the following core competencies of an effective and efficient law enforcement officer: ability to use good judgment and to problem solve, capacity for empathy and compassion, capacity for multi-tasking, ability to demonstrate courage and to take responsibility, ability to be resourceful and be initiative, demonstrating assertiveness, possess and demonstrate integrity, and capacity for engaging in teamwork and ability to collaborate.
The way health care is provided in the criminal justice system has undergone substantial modifications in the past ten years. The equivalency concept, which states that the standards of healthcare for individuals in custody should be the same as for those in the general society, is the foundation of the present government policy for offender health care. Offenders have a variety of health care needs and difficulties. Thus, a wide range of health care services must be directly provided by the PNP, or at the very least, accessible through it. The BSN-prepared PNP uniformed officers, who have a variety of highly developed skills and abilities that frequently cover a number of specialist areas, could be a good resource for such health care services.
The PNP is concerned about the rising number of unresolved murder, rape, and/or co-occurring criminal cases in the nation, as well as the rising frequency of violence against women and children. For these reasons, there are limited crime laboratories located in each region. Along these lines, the research team became interested in carrying out this investigation in an effort to assess how prepared PNP uniformed personnel with BSNs are to handle crucial forensic evidence. Its goals were to ascertain their suitability for handling evidence and joining the forensic team, address the mismatch in employment between nurses and nursing graduates working for the PNP in non-nursing departments, provide a chance for PNP employees to receive forensics training because it is somewhat related to what nurses do, and utilize BSN-prepared PNP uniformed personnel to help gather and preserve evidence in order to address the high rate of unresolved crimes in the provinces, particularly in remote areas where crime investigation is challenging due to the lack of a crime investigation team. Their skills as PNP uniformed officers and nurses could be used to deliver medical
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