by Darren Castro
“I hate that qualifier,” said Dan Santos, a first year nursing student at Hunter College. “I hate ‘male’ nurse. I’m going to be a nurse, period.”
More than 100,000 Filipino nurses are produced by the Philippines each year and the profession is one of its most prominent exports. For Filipino families emigrating to other parts of the world, the profession continues to attract young Pinoy people, particularly male Filipinos. According to the United States Census Bureau the number of male registered nurses has increased from 2.7 percent in 1970 to 9.6 percent since 2011.
For Santos, a struggle to find his future started back in middle school. “I always drew and had it in my mind that I would do something artistic,” said Santos. “I went into high school through the art program thinking I would have a career in graphic design or illustration.”
His sister Kris has studied at the Hunter Bellevue School of Nursing. Their mother has been in the nursing profession for over 26 years.
“It’s great that he finally found something to build his career on,” said Kris. “And I’m sure he’ll find a way to use his artistic abilities some other way.”
“It wasn’t necessarily a struggle against what my family was doing, but I thought there were already too many Filipino nurses here, let alone in my own family,” said Santos.
His comments recall the controversial comments of former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry who, back in 2012, was quoted as saying “if you go to the hospital now, you find a number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines. And no offense, but let’s grow our own teachers, let’s grow our own nurses — and so that we don’t have to be scrounging around in our community clinics and other kinds of places — having to hire people from somewhere else.”
However, foreign nurses help form a crucial part of the nation’s medically employed work force. Typically, foreign nurses wait overseas for an employment-based green card (which can take five years or more for most countries). Stuart Anderson, the Executive Director for the National Foundation for American Policy, has said “it is a testament to the need for foreign nurses that health care employers would endure the cost and the wait of at least five years until a foreign nurse could begin working in the United States, something unheard of in other fields.”
Santos does not see a problem with Filipino nurses; he just did not see himself as one. Asked what drove the change of heart, Santos said it was seeing his sister go through college and start work as a nurse.
“She would tell me about her experiences and just how fulfilling it was to talk to patients. That really struck me, getting to talk to patients and do everything you can to ease their worries.”
Those feelings ring true for Rafael C. Castro M.D., a primary care specialist for internal medicine at his private practice in Princeton, NJ.
“I was supposed to be an engineer before my aunt died from lymphoma cancer,” said Castro. “I decided to enter the medical field because nothing else mattered to me at the time. The loss was devastating to my mother.”
Dr. Castro felt that the trend of Filipino nurses both in and out of the Philippines signaled a need to find both financial stability and self-fulfillment.
“Friends and colleagues whose children are just entering the medical field were doing so because it was natural for them being surrounded by family doing the same,” he said.
Santos has found a passion in his new career goal.
“I feel like I can still be creative in the way I interact with people and be happy and proud of what I’m doing,” said Santos.
“To be able to comfort someone in need and make a difference in their health and lives will be a challenge I look forward to everyday.”
(Note: Dr. Castro is a relative of the author.)