Recognizing an Outstanding Filipino Nurse

Recognizing an Outstanding Filipino Nurse

Lolita B. Compas

By Peter Ungvarski:

For more than four decades, American hospitals, periodically short of skilled nurses, have aggressively recruited nurses from the Philippines. They prize Filipino nurses for their English-language skills and their education in public and professional schools that are modeled on American counterparts. The hospitals also value the nurses for their work ethic, their loyalty to employers and a tenderness that seems to stem from a culture where people insist on caring for their own aging or sick relatives.

Of the many Filipino nurses working in the United States, one nurse clearly stands out for her dedication to helping uplift the lives of the rest of America's immigrant nurses. 

Her name is Lolita B. Compas.

 

Lolita finished her Bachelor of Nursing in 1967 at St. Paul College of Manila. In 1977, she obtained her Master of Arts in Nursing at New York University. Starting as staff nurse at the Cabrini Medical Center (formerly Columbus Hospital in New York City) in 1969, she advanced from a staff nurse to a clinical instructor in the critical care unit, hemodialysis and emergency services in the same hospital.

Since arriving in New York, Lolita has been helping her fellowmen by providing guidance and support to thousands of immigrant nurses in the United States. Known to many Filipino and other Asian nurses in New York as "Ate Lolit," (Auntie Lolit) she has become a surrogate family member to these nurses. As a professional nurse in the United States, Lolita recognized that although immigrant nurses from many different countries were dedicated, competent, and articulate, they needed help in adjusting to American culture and developing their confidence and aggressiveness.

Early on in her career, she joined the Philippine Nurses Association New York chapter (PNA-NY), the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), and the American Nurses Association. This gave her several venues to pursue her mission of helping her fellow immigrant nurses. She gave her personal time and effort assisting many of them in various situations, ranging from the professional to the personal. These included helping them study for state board examinations, how to shop, finding new apartments, assisting in visa matters, and even finding houses of worship. Lolita's concern for personal dignity and human rights escalated when she became aware of the injustices many of the immigrant nurses experienced such as monetary exploitation by recruitment agencies, substandard living arrangements, forced overtime work and continued threat of revocation of sponsorship with their visas.

Through her work as chairperson of the New York State Nurses Association Council on Human Rights, she was able to provide sufficient documentation to the New York State Attorney General's Office, which led to an investigation of employment agencies, the situation of immigrant nurses, and the subsequent sanctions to the offenders.

Lolita's efforts did not go unnoticed by her peers. She was elected as President of the New York State Nurses Association, the first Filipino-American and the first Asian-American to head this oldest, largest and most innovative state nurses association in the United States. She was also a director of National Coalition of Ethnic Minority Nurses Association, member of the Appeals Committee of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools, member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Nursing, and delegate to the American Nurses Association House of Delegates. In the past, she was director at large of NYSNA, and president of the Philippine Nurses Association in New York and in America. Lolita B. Compas is a dynamic, committed leader with integrity, who has touched so many lives-those of her patients, her colleagues and many Filipino Americans.

 

Minority Nurse Pioneers Honored at ANA Convention
Mar 30, 2013

Lolita B. Compas, MA, RN, CEN, a past president of the Philippine Nurses Association of America, received the Honorary Human Rights Award for her advocacy on behalf of foreign-educated nurses working in the U.S. Since arriving in America in 1969, Compas has helped many other immigrant nurses overcome the challenges of transitioning into U.S. nursing careers, such as finding housing, adjusting to cultural differences and studying for state boards. During the 1980s nursing shortage, she was instrumental in providing documentation to the New York State attorney general regarding the exploitation of foreign nurses. Her efforts led to sanctions against offending employment agencies.

https://minoritynurse.com/minority-nurse-pioneers-honored-at-ana-convention