Monday, September 01, 2008 A physician with a heart By Henry I. Yu, M.D.
BROWSING over our college graduation yearbook one lazy afternoon brought back memories of those times in my life in Silliman University. I smiled at the thought of those wonderful years spent in that campus by the sea, a beautiful chapter in my book of life.
But unlike those graduates who had their minds set on finding employment or working for a company after graduation we, who were proceeding to medicine proper, were excited about going into medical school. In my case, it was Cebu Institute of Medicine (CIM).
The summer of 1973 saw us feeling ecstatic and excited to be accepted at CIM for our medicine proper. Our maiden voyage to the medical world started that Monday morning, June 4, 1973. It was our first day of classes as first year medical students. We were divided into two sections (A and B), with each section comprising a hundred, alphabetically arranged.
As medical students in the ‘70s, we didn’t have the hi-tech gadgets and amenities that the students of this dot.com generation now conveniently enjoying.
Ours was the traditional didactic method of teaching, theirs is problem based learning (PBL). Malling was not heard of then.
No Internet cafe, resto bars, virtual library, etc. Ours was plain and simple. You didn’t see us around the mall during break time or walk a mile to eat lunch or snack around Osmena Blvd. or Mango Ave.
It’s 1979: Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the way that life is treating you? Where are you going to, do you know?
I remember this song as it held so much meaning in our lives as physicians who just passed the medical board exam that year. We were at a crossroad, facing the challenges of what lay ahead as medical persons.
Yes, the feeling of having passed the board exam was so indescribably exciting as it was exhilarating that we jumped with joy because. At long last, we finally had the license to practice our profession, with an M.D. after our name. What followed was a series of thanksgiving parties hosted by our parents and relatives, congratulatory ads in the newspapers, etc. Indeed, that was more than enough reason to celebrate.
Twenty-nine years after passing the medical board exam in 1979—what now? Looking back, Medicine is undeniably one profession that requires long years of study, aside from the tedious and rigid academic and clinical training before one can be considered a doctor.
Many times in our life as medical students, we had to choose between night life and staying home to study for the exams next day. Indeed, there’s no short cut to becoming a doctor.
As medical students, we went through a lot of stresses, burn-outs and fatigue brought by a smorgasbord of exams to hurdle so we could graduate and undergo the required one-year postgraduate internship (PGI) to qualify for the medical board exam. It is a prerequisite to become a licensed doctor. Then there was the residency training, if we so desired, in the field of specialization we wanted.
Truly, the road to becoming a physician is long and arduous. One has to spend approximately12 of one’s life after high school graduation: four years in college as a preparatory course; four years in proper medicine; one year PGI; and three to five years of residency training.
A doctor will always be a student because medical science is such a dynamic field. What’s true and applicable now may not be so in the next four or five years.
We were at a crossroad, not knowing what lay ahead. Will I have my residency training in Cebu or Manila or the U.S.? What field of specialization will I go into?
So many questions. So many challenges. Today, I’m sure new physicians who just passed the board exam are also at a crossroad. They will also be asking themselves the same questions we asked 29 years ago.
As the song goes: Do you know where you’re going to? After all that has been said and done, be it as it may, at the end of the day, there’s only one thing we should be or try to become: a physician with a heart.
