Road To Residency

My chill life is over.

After five years of living a normal life, I have to step-up my career and proceed into residency training. I think I said this before in this blog that the medical career is very broad, one can go into public health, research, clinical medicine (IM, FM, Psychia, Pedia), surgical (general surgery, OB, ophtha, ENT) or auxiliary (patho, rehab, nuclear med).  It took me five years to really think hard about what I want---a clinical career. Based on my med school and board exam performance, I was quite inclined to Internal Medicine and yes, I love IM! So I prepared for it and made it to PGH pre-res. But in the middle of pre-residency, I did not want a life spent like that for the next three years. I am not a single woman anymore, I have a husband and children to take care of. I can’t live with a every 3-days duty** schedule. That, for me, is too morbid. I pity my children. I did not get into IM residency but I am even thankful. I found a benign but competitive clinical training---Family Medicine in Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center. Yey!

What is Family Medicine? Honestly, it is one of those med school subjects that was not quite taken seriously because it deals with basic clinical cases that students feel they’re so light they can handle it even with eyes closed. Our FM internship rotation gave us opportunity to rest during weekends. But hey, FM is not to be taken lightly. It molds physicians to become 5-star physicians: clinician, researcher, social mobilizer, leader and teacher. As an academic discipline, FM encompasses a distinct body of knowledge appropriate to the needs of a changing society. It is not disease-oriented but also health-oriented which emphasizes on the importance of disease prevention, health maintenance and curative medicine. FM manages patients holistically, we're not only dealing with the physiological aspect of the illness but we also include its psychosocial factors.

Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center is the home base of Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) College of Medicine, one of the top medical schools in the Philippines. Needless to say, OMMC is dominated by PLM grads (the same way PGH is dominated by UPCM grads) so I was hesitant to blend in at first. But during pre-res, my co-residents are very accommodating as well as the consultants! It is only here where we can speak to the consultants as friends, not as god-like creatures who’d make us feel like we know nothing.

One month into residency, I am eternally grateful that Allah led me to this path. We only go on duty once a week, and on an 8-5 sched during weekdays. So if I’m lucky and I’m not on duty during weekend, I have all my time for the little tots. The husband and I can still do stuff together---groceries, market and do jogging once in a while. I can even do other stuff because I have plenty of time! Alhamdulillah..

**duty means 24-48 hours attending to patients in the hospital, either in the wards, ER or OPD. Outside the duty schedule is either pre-duty or post-duty, that still warrants being in the hospital for 12 hours. A regular resident knows only 3 kinds of days: pre-duty, duty and post-duty. Then repeat. There are no weekends or holidays.