random thoughts

Last Friday, we had the privelege of being assigned to Dr. Annie Francisco’s private clinic.  It is common knowledge that when the new batch of clerks rotating in Family Med come to visit every month, she prepares a huge feast.. (and i mean huge!) and if you’re lucky she has giveaways from her travels, which is another reason why everybody looks forward to it.  Her only requirement is that she takes pictures of every group that comes to visit and you write something like a reflection paper (sa amin kahit insights na lang cz every year it’s the same).. Through hard work, she and her husband were able to build a three storey building with a lying-in clinic, x-ray machine, her own pharmacy and a laboratory.

Dr Francisco keeps photo albums of clerks dating to circa 2003.. so it’s quite amusing to see our 2nd year PGH residents dressed in their immaculate white med uniforms.. funny how graduating from med school makes you look more mature than your real age… incidentally, it was Annie’s (my blockmate) birthday that day and she doesnt look older than 16 but she’s actually already 23… let’s see 3 years from now whether Annie will look older than 26.

Anyway, I was inspired by Dr Annie Francisco, not only because she has a successful practice, but also because of her demeanor as well.. She is funny, makuwento, talks really fast and animatedly, down to earth and candid. She even gave us a few practical tips on how to start your private practice..

1. maging ma-PR - well, i always thought this would work for me.. you have to build rapport with your patients.. even if you see them in the malls or in other public places, dapat ikaw bumati sa kanila.. as Dr. Annie said "wala naman mawawala sa yo" Besides, patients are still people.. For me, biggest accomplishment ko na yung binabati ako ng patients sa PGH canteen, sa ER, sa CI etc. long after my rotation is over..  that means, i am not just a monitoring machine.. i actually made an impact in their short stay in PGH

2. be business minded - Ang pangarap daw niya sa buhay nung siya ay bata pa ay yumaman because their family was not that well-off.  She was able to buy her parents a rest house even. Hindi porket doctor ka eh hindi ka na puede mag-business.. but this doesnt automatically mean you take advantage of your patients… for example, pooling your financial resources with other doctors to purchase equipment so you can set up a laboratory diagnostic center.. unless you are uber-rich and you would like to shell out P10 million bucks of your own money for equipment.. eh kelan pa yung return of investment mo? after 20 years? cost-effectiveness lang yan she even gave us an idea of setting up a dialysis center.. (sana magka-pera ako to do that so i can help treat my Kuya Paolo) because there will be more chronic kidney disease patients who will need dialysis in the future

3. network - Again, recognize that as a doctor you have your limitations. you can’t treat everything. That is why you need to refer to other doctors.. Dr Francisco has this notebook filled with calling cards from different subspecs.. Sometimes she call them up herself so the patient will feel inaasikaso talaga siyang mabuti..

4. dont be masungit - don’t be masungit to your patients, your classmates, your co-residents.. they will be your future patients and colleagues.. nobody will refer to you if you act so snooty and masungit. oh well, easy to say, hard to do in PGH.. you will need loads of patience.

5. Be happy  with what you have - Obviously they have been blessed but the good thing about them is they don’t desire for more than what God has given them.. baka magalit pa si God at bawiin if you’re ungrateful..

6. Go the extra mile - Take time to listen to your patients. Treat them nicely.. and soon, they won’t be just patients but your friends as well. Work hard and you will reap your rewards.

I asked Dr. Francisco if we could come back and observe or talk to her again and the gracious person that she is, she willingly obliged. sobrang bait.. sobrang nakakatuwa.. Im hoping future doctors will be more like her and that she will continue to welcome and inspire the idealistic clerks who come to visit her clinic.

For those who were glued to their television sets yesterday, it was quite disturbing to see the dead people from the ULTRA stampede being piled up on the trucks… I was watching at 11 am and was puzzled how this could have happened.  At that time, I saw this elderly woman, her face paper-white, with her arms outstretched while being transferred from a stretcher… without even being covered by a blanket..The idea was incomprehensible to me even if Im used to seeing people dying everyday in the hospital.

A friend texted me to say she was angry to see some of the Wowowee audience members still waving at the camera despite knowing that a tragic event had just occurred.  Apparently, some of the audience members stayed on hoping that the program would continue while outside the crowd was composed of family members looking for the missing.  I was pissed off to see one of the Viva Hot Babes say on camera that sayang they had practiced 5 days just for the opening production number of Wowowee and she continued to complain of the bruises she had sustained from dance practice. Hel-lo?!?! kung hindi ka ba naman insensitive, 74 people had just died and hundreds more injured from the stampede outside of your comfortable dressing room and all you can say is that you have bruises on your arms? ano ba yun?!?

if you read the editorial of anthropologist/sociologist Michael Tan in the front page of the Inquirer today, he made an interesting comment "How long will we allow the entertainment industry to use celebrities, with their manufactured aura, to dictate to us what to buy, how to live- how to die? Doubtless, heads will roll as authorities ferret out people to blame."

In my personal opinion, it would be wrong to blame the Wowowee staff or the ABS-CBN management for everything that happened yesterday.. It was an unforeseen event that could have happened anywhere because of the present economic crisis our country is facing.  It is not the entertainment industry that is solely to blame for giving hopes to our countrymen.. They say that the program has been giving dole-outs… Maybe in a sense all they wanted was to help because they recognized that these people are really hard-up.   And if you saw Willie Revillame and the other hosts of Wowowee, they looked like they were in a state of disbelief, still dazed from the incident.

The crowd estimate was around 50,000 and only 17,000 will be accomodated inside.  Can you imagine that? Instead of saying, how much security officers did they need to secure ULTRA or if the promoters given the raffle tickets in advance, would this have been prevented?  Maybe we failed to ask how many of the 50,000 people who lined up and travelled all the way from the various provinces, are unemployed? Most of those who died were elderly women who wanted to try to bring home even a small amount of money, or even just catch a glimpse of their favorite artistas. Michael Tan said that the dead were human sacrifices on the altar of consumerism and latter-day idols.. Perhaps he is right to some degree.. But I think that it must be out of sheer desperation to camp out outside of ULTRA for several days, in hopes of being able to be part of the program’s Pera o Bayong segment or to try your luck in winning the P2.5 million house and lot or the car they’re giving off in the raffle. Im sure you wont stay there for several days, wondering what your next meal is (probably instant noodles), with your belongings in one bag if you did not really need the money that badly.. It is a reflection of how a big part of the Philippine society has continued to be uneducated, unemployed and impoverished. On a personal note, our patients in PGH have to pay for every laboratory exam and meds, walang gamit sa ER for Surgery trauma patients and we have to run to the Pedia-ER just to get NSS (layman’s terms: dextrose) kasi out of stock so that the trauma patient wont suffer more blood loss and the bantays are surprised to find out that their money had just run out and we can’t do anything else for the patient.

Imagine nanunood lang ako ng television and this event got me thinking.  Gio says i live in a perfect bubble.. at present, wala akong problema. I admit im even apathetic at times because in the hospital you have no contact with the outside world, kinda detached from reality.. kaya na-bother talaga ako to watch TV yesterday..  And for those who are wondering we are not stakeholders in ABS kaya i dont blame them.. personal opinion ko lang ito.. tell me what you think!