An Impending Crisis?

if the United States had Enron and the housing bubble, the European Union had Greece default, and China has the ghost cities to fuel its artificial economy, what do you think the Philippines has up for it?

i've been talking to my friends about it and i've found out that i'm not alone in this point of view.

if you recall a few years ago, we had we called the "nursing boom". this covered the period between 2004-2010 when nursing schools (and even underqualified ones) would sprout up everywhere like mushrooms.

Dr. Fabella Hospita -- dubbed as the busiest ward on the planet 

(3 mothers in 1 bed; 60 deliveries per day on average)

so when the US closed down (or more accurately, "trimmed down" its applicants), the market for the Philippine nurses decreased. though other countries were still as open as ever, most nurses had their eyes set on America. this led to the immediate increase in underemployment as these unemployed nurses sped towards the BPO industries.

so what has this to do with us now? the question is, "where did the other nurses go?"

think about where i am now and you will find the answer.. medical school.

this would be a natural thing since nurses are trained as allied health professionals. the country is known to have a major shortage in the supply of physicians. but where is this shortage? this can be found in the boondocks and wherever there is least access to a, hopefully working, health center.

but i think about it this way. my batch right now is roughly 300-350 students, which is a big cut from around 700 when we first started off. the batch a year below us is roughly 600, from 900. and lastly, the freshmen number to more than a thousand (though it wouldn't be far off to think the number would dwindle to around 800 come 2nd year or 3rd year).

put the numbers together and how much we get? at any given time, there are approximately 1,950 medical students in my school. multiply that to 37 other medical schools nationwide and what will we have?

a potential crisis. 

sure, i have no doubt some of these future physicians would end up "serving humanity" in the barrios and barangays across the country's 36,289-kilometer coastline. but how many hospitals do we have? how many residency programs are available? and how many slots are there available in these programs?

medical misson program with the F. & A.M. in Intramuros

(Aug. 18, 2013)

the numbers are clear. competition is getting tighter and tighter. all the more, we have to push harder. things will not be as easy as those among us have experienced. that is, of course, assuming what they did experience is relatively easier than what we will be going through.

in short, there are fewer residency programs than there are doctors.

battleplan --> excel in a well-rounded education, push academic and extra-curricular limits, get known among medical circles outside school, get a foreign clerkship (if possible), get creative in learning, maximize and incorporate nursing skills and experiences into medical practice, seek real-time training (no matter how limited, at first), pray with all our might,and greatest of all, submit to the will of the Father.

it will be hard. it will be rough. and some will play downright dirty. that's how things are. and they say..

"fortune favors the prepared mind". - Louis Pasteur (French microbiologist, chemist, and father of the Germ Theory of Disease)