BAGUIO CITY—“If given a chance to have a permanent job, I want my mom to come home,” says Jovie Ann Decoyna, the highest scorer in last year’s nursing board exams.

Decoyna, 24, hails from Benguet and is the youngest of six children of a farmer and a domestic who has been working in Taiwan for 15 years. The graduate of Baguio Central University topped the nursing licensure exams by scoring 89 percent.

“Life in the farm is hard, and this has been one of my motivations to strive harder,” she says.

“I still do not know what opportunities are in store for me, but if given the chance, I want to spend time with my family than go abroad to work.”

Decoyna earned a degree in biology from Saint Louis University in 2005 before she took up nursing. Mia Jacalne, vice president for marketing of Mind Movers Review Center, where Decoyna had reviewed for the nursing exams, describes her as a diligent student.

“She had always been one of our bets to top the board examinations,” Jacalne said, “but we never expected her to get the top spot.”

A total of 39,455 or 44.51 percent of the 88,649 examinees passed the tests last year, the Professional Regulatory Commission said. Rick M. Reyes