Prudence and Madness

(photo courtesy of Karen)

This bunch of good-looking doctors occupied almost half of Gerry’s Grill in Greenhills Promenade last night. Hehe.

Most of the attendees were from subsection D3 like Shirley, Mark (but sometimes he’s also D4!), Arianne, Josh, Candy, Ann, Eva, Jane and Doki. D2 was represented by PJ and Nina. Ajae and I were from D4. D5 were represented by Karen, Alex, Angela, and Che.

It was good seeing these fellas last night. Somehow, the small get-together with my med school classmates helped me bring back my focus to what is important now, my medical career. I have been too bothered with problems that I forgot that I need to work on my future.

While most of the those who were at the get-together are into residency programs in different hospitals in Manila, there are those who are either done with or currently taking the USMLE steps. Mark, Shirley, and Karen are leaving soon to start their residency programs in the U.S. Our other classmates, like my cousin Dennis, have started a year earlier, skipping internship here in the country, and went on with the training in the Maryland. Others are still in the process of accomplishing the necessary (and darn expensive) exams to be able to apply for the few and competitive slots for IMG (International Medical Graduates) abroad. I started in my own journey but I still have a long way to go (and more expenses coming my way but with nothing yet to pay for it).

Some people would not/refuse to understand why doctors leave the country. People call those doctors who leave as sellouts and unpatriotic. But what about the loads of nurses, teachers, engineers, domestic helpers and other skilled workers leaving? People say they are heroes because they bring in the valuable dollars that keep our poor country’s economy afloat and that they are martyrs because of the sacrifice they make, leaving their families behind, so that they could earn the needed money to survive. But for doctors? Doctors, for some people, are just selfish, money-hungry professionals that’s why they want to go abroad - to have more money. For these people, doctors who leave abandon their country and are unpatriotic, leaving their poor countrymen wanting for quality health care. And for them, the doctors leaving the country are the ones to blame for the poor health care in this country. But what people fail to see is that the exodus of doctors are merely symptoms of what is definitely ailing this country, government’s lack of concern about health care and the ordinary people’s growing mistrust of doctors.

I’ve written more extensively about this topic in my article, M.D.’s On Strike. You’d notice that most of the comments run against the ideas I’ve laid down in the article. Most see that the only reason why doctors are leaving is that doctors want more money and that people think doctors deserve such monetary rewards because they are already “rich”. The image of a doctor in dreamy comforts in life is just hard to erase in the narrow-minded and in those who refuse to see.  And, of course, people don’t see doctors as human beings anymore that they fail to see that doctors, too, need some extent of satisfaction with their careers, which isn’t just monetary in nature and which cannot be achieved anymore with the present status of the country and its citizens.

So, after hearing the stories of all those who went to the U.S., underwent the interviews, the observerships, and the research, my resolve to continue my medical career abroad was strengthened.  Call it selfish because the country will have one good doctor less or that I’m not doing my duties as a citizen.  But survival is first priority.  Always.  I will survive even if with monetary problems.  But I will not survive if my happiness is going to be sacrificed for the sake of those who do not appreciate and understand such a sacrifice, those who presume that I ought to sacrifice myself for them, when they, themselves, are not worthy of such.