This paper examines nurse-led political activism in the context of contemporary socio-political issues in the Philippines. This paper integrates Martha Nussbaum's transitional anger as a factor that can help catalyze transformational change. It will be argued that while political activist movements may help counter income inequality and poor working conditions, the concept of moral inertia warrants critical analysis.

Despite numerous accounts of political participation in the nursing discipline, there exists a limited understanding of the concept of political competency. This paper utilizes Walker and Avant's (2014) eight steps of concept analysis. The defining attributes of political competency are ethical and sociopolitical knowing, courage, perseverance, and persuasion. The antecedents of the concept are reflection, resources, and clarity of values. Lastly, the consequences of political competency are change and social justice. Both change and social justice, as end products, must be viewed not as consequences that can be achieved overnight. Instead, these consequences must be looked upon as processes that are sustained by ongoing and committed exchanges between actors in the political arena and nurses with political competency. In juxtaposing political competency to Patricia Benner's “novice to expert model,” future studies may attempt to determine how political competency is embodied by an expert nurse.
Nursing

The banning of new nursing schools in the Philippines was imposed in 2010 to mitigate the failing compliance of schools with various competency standards set forth by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), in addition to the burden of students in paying their affiliations with hospitals. In the midst of the shortage of nurses in the country that was magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) decided to lift the moratorium. This paper draws on the narratives of nursing leaders and professionals on the phenomenon of nursing shortage and the issues that can arise with the reopening of nursing schools. The verbatims highlight the historical and contemporary entanglement of various issues that contributed to the problem of nursing shortage. In addressing these issues, this paper looks into some of the problems in Philippine nursing that may conform with the broad contemporary problems identified by philosopher Alain Badiou. Viable solutions may be found in the exploration of emerging research methodologies, consideration of systems thinking using technological advances, and incorporating political competency among Filipino nurses.
nursing education ; nursing school

Dengue is a global health issue and is also regarded as one of the major public health concerns in the Philippines. Presented in this paper is the application of a geographic information system (GIS) in mapping dengue cases in Baguio City. A descriptive research design was utilized and mapped dengue cases were reconciled with environmental correlates such as land cover, housing information (independent, mixed, or interconnected), hydrology (water bodies and canals), urbanization level (urban or rural), elevation, soil, and land surface temperature. Moreover, demographic factors and practices were utilized for further analysis. Results show that interconnected housing, urbanization, land surface temperature, hydrology, and population density are predictors of dengue cases in Baguio City with the predictive power of 0.3810 (strong), 0.3426 (strong), 0.2509 (medium), 0.1675 (medium), and 0.1323 (medium), respectively. In the context of dengue, several data gaps in health information systems exist. Although the Manual of Procedures for the Philippine Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (PIDSR) published by the Department of Health (DOH) of 2014 provides a detailed guide in the management and surveillance of communicable disease, the use of GIS was noted to be unspecified. Using GIS provides the possibility of harmonizing several data sets to better inform policymakers.
Dengue ; Geographic Information Systems