The Gathering of the Minds

What I love about attending CME's of the Doctors to the Barrios is the opportunity to listen to stories about the adventures of these doctors. From the mountainous terrain to the most isolated island in the middle of the Philippine Sea, these brave doctors persevere in their commitment to provide quality health care service. I have always said it before, these rural health physicians along with so many rural health workers are the true modern-day heroes of the Philippines. They could have made a choice and leave the country for better opportunities. Instead, they stayed and made so much difference in the lives of so many.

Through the efforts of these doctors, poor municipalities were able to gain a new rural health unit, new set of supplies, new projects that were able to provide some form of sustainability and quite frankly, a new sense of hope.

The 34th CME is quite unique. For the first time, the U.P. College of Medicine together with National Telehealth handled the curriculum of the CME. There were a lot of changes. One change was that the Reporting which was usually done every Friday of the CME was now moved to the second to the last day of the CME. The weekend was free time for the participants but the team building session was done on a Monday instead of the usual weekend. There were no outstanding reporters nor the giving out of laptops from Telehealth to DTTB's who have been referring to them cases through text or email.

A few points though. There were lectures given to us during the CME that were not that relevant to a Doctor to the barrio. For example, the lecture on ACLS was, although very important to any medical professional, not that important to a DTTB and quite honestly added only to the frustration of the DTTB (wala gani inug-bakal BP apparatus, defibrillator pa). The lecture on accomplishing the Death Certificate was very redundant. It could have been productive if the lecturer on Death Certificate forms was a doctor-lawyer.

The workshop for Batch 22 and Batch 23 during the Thursday and Friday of the CME was meaningful but it would have been more productive if there were DTTB's from the lower batches present during the interaction. By listening to the stories of the older batches, the younger batches can learn a lot especially on handling similar cases. The workshop for Batch 24 and Batch 25 during the same days was a little bit off as well. The lecture on SWOT analysis, etc. could have been given during the pre-deployment seminar, which in our case, was in fact given. During our pre-dep, we were taught to do SWOT analysis and problem prioritization. I am not sure how the Batch 25 did their pre-dep. I would have appreciated it if there were more interaction between the younger batch and older batch, allowing both the new and the outgoing to share experiences and learning. I remember during the CME in Leyte, a small group discussion was organized by the DTTB alumni. One small group was on Philhealth accreditation. One small group was on Budgeting and Planning. And there were other groups. The new and younger batches were then invited to choose any of the small groups which they felt were important to them at that moment. It was I believe very productive.

At the same time, the reporting of the lower batch was quite scattered as well. Many of them prepared reports that were more than 50 to 60 slides. And yet, as far as I have observed, none of them were able to identify there priority problems, problems that are very urgent and require attention considering the time span of only 2 years. Instead, these new DTTB's listed every problem there was in their community. I do hope they can accomplish all of those tasks. No wonder some of them felt so overwhelmed. During our time, we were only asked to prepare at most 10 slides and to present only 2-4 priority problems. And with these identified problems, we would be devising a health plan (to be presented on the second CME) and later an accomplishment report (to be presented during the third and final CME).

What I enjoyed the most though was the camarederie among the DTTBs. The time spent at Enchanted Kingdom, the evening talks inside room 315 and the occasional impromptu parties were avenues for both the young and the old DTTBs to just be free from work and stress.

Now, we are ready to go back to our areas of assignment once again, fully recharged and re-inspired by the tales of heroism from fellow DTTBs.





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