In a bold move to bridge the nursing gap, hospitals nationwide have enlisted 300 clinical care associates, a Malacañang advisory body said on Friday.

In a Palace meeting earlier this week with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Private Sector Advisory Council Health Sector Lead Paolo Borromeo said the CCA positions were created under the Marcos administration for nursing school graduates who still need to pass the board exams.

Borromeo, president and CEO of Ayala Healthcare Holdings Inc., said that Commission on Higher Education Chairperson Prospero de Vera had asked for 1,000 CCAs, but “now it’s just 300.”

“A thousand CCAs is not a small number in a country where we graduate about 7,000 to 10,000 nurses yearly,” Borromeo said.

“That’s an instant addition to our nursing population. If we are able to fill the seats that Chair Popoy was able to get, that’s a thousand CCAs, but now it’s only 300,” Borromeo said.

Last year, the President witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding among the PSAC, CHEd, and the Department of Health. The MoU would employ unlicensed nursing graduates.

“It allows those nursing graduates who had taken their boards but had not been able to pass to work nonetheless if they could establish their competencies in certain subjects of the nursing curriculum,” Marcos had said during the MoU signing in 2023.

“And that way, they can get to work immediately,” he said.