Supreme court rules against
high-scoring medical grads
Posted: 5:31 AM (Manila Time) | Jul. 04, 2004
By Philip C. Tubeza
Inquirer News Service
A correction to this article has been made.
THE SUPREME Court has ruled that 11 graduates of the Fatima College of Medicine cannot take their oaths as physicians after they passed the February 2003 medical board exams with "phenomenal" grades.
The SC Second Division reversed the Court of Appeals decision which affirmed the Manila Regional Trial Court ruling ordering the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) to administer the oath to the graduates.
The SC ruled that the PRC had the authority to refuse the graduates the "privilege" of practicing medicine since they had not "satisfactorily passed" the board exam. The PRC even charged the graduates with "immorality, dishonesty, fraud and deceit" for allegedly cheating in the exams.
The SC said its decision was binding only on Fatima graduates Arlene V. :l , Celerina S. , Rafael I.
, Bernardita B., Gloria T. :, Hubert S.
, Nancy J.
, Ernesto L.
, Herminio V.
., Maria Victoria M.
and Merly D. Sta : .
Fatima College had 79 graduates who took the 2003 board exams but only 11 of them pursued the case in court after the PRC refused to register them as doctors, court records showed.
On July 21, 1993, the PRC Board of Medicine issued a resolution charging the Fatima graduates with immorality, gross misconduct, fraud and deceit for allegedly cheating in the Biochemistry and Obstetrics and Gynecology exams, the "most difficult subjects."
Eleven Fatima graduates scored 100 percent in Bio-Chem and 10 got 100 percent in OB-Gyne, another 11 got 99 percent in Bio-Chem and 21 scored 99 percent OB-Gyne, the SC said.
It noted that the board noticed that the Fatima graduates got marks of 95 percent or better in both subjects, "and no one got a mark lower than 90 percent."
The PRC sought the help of Father Bienvenido F. Nebres SJ, president of the Ateneo de Manila University and an authority on statistics, to conduct a statistical analysis of the results.
After comparing the scores of Fatima graduates with those of examinees from De La Salle University and Perpetual Help College of Medicine, Nebres reported that the scores of Fatima graduates were "not only incredibly high but unusually clustered close to each other."
