My Indang RHU Community Immersion Experience

          When I learned that I was assigned to the Indang Rural Health Unit (RHU) for my summer immersion, I was both excited and nervous. I looked forward to seeing the real-life application of what we’ve been studying as first-year medical students, here in Indang where I’ve been living while studying medicine at Cavite State University. Looking back, what happened over the duration of our summer immersion was a transformative experience that shaped my understanding of healthcare delivery and reinforced my sense of purpose in becoming a doctor. What surprised me the most during the immersion was how fast I went from observing to becoming someone who helped keep the RHU running. I didn’t expect that I’d be confidently taking patients’ vital signs, doing history-taking, and explaining survey questions to actual patients. I was also surprised by the work that goes into running a rural health unit every single day, even during challenging conditions like sto...

Today marked our last day of immersion duty at the Indang RHU, and from the start, we were determined to leave a good mark as representatives of CvSU's medicine program. Unlike the days before, today the weather was as sunny as could be, which probably helped cause the influx of patients the entire day. At this point, taking patients' vital signs, registering them, and taking their chief complaints were things we've done so much, that it was no wonder that there were no issues or errors that arose the entire day in terms of the registration area activities. Since deworming and the first 1000 days were taught yesterday, today's health teaching focused on dengue and family planning; meaning that I wasn't assigned to any health teaching tasks today. Observing them, I can attest to the success of their health teaching sessions. When the queue of patients lining up in the registration area lessened, we attempted to gather data such as that of infrastructure, or pharmacy ...

After only having immersion duty in the Indang RHU on Monday for the previous week. Today, we finally continue or RHU duties! Like before, the second-years were assigned to the consultation room, while the first-years were assigned to the registration area. Different from the previous days of duty here at the RHU though, we finally start the health teaching program here. Due to the scheduling issues brought about by the stormy weather, it was decided that all of the teaching was to be conducted here at the RHU. Though we would have liked to teach the specific communities of the barangays, we were still satisfied with the opportunity to teach the community through the people going to the RHU.      For the teaching, we were assigned in pairs with specific topics to teach, scheduled at certain times. Paired with a second-year student, we were assigned to teach about deworming and the first 1000 days. We split the topics so we could focus on a specific one, and I took dewormi...

Today, for the first time since the immersion program started, I found myself not being in Indang, Cavite as I went back home to my grandparents' home in Las Piñas just in case the storms got too rough. Though the storms threaten to stay strong going into the next week, me and my groupmates kept our heads down and continued to work on the parts assigned to us for the CAM and local health system report outputs. We were told that our schedule for next week was RHU duty for Monday, campus preparations on Tuesday, and campus presentations from Wednesday to Thursday. Though I have to admit I wanted to spend more time serving the Indang RHU next week, it was understandable that we needed to be in the campus in Tuesday since CHED would be visiting us that day, and they are responsible for the scholarships for the majority of us CvSU Medicine students.  Our leader Richard meeting at Sunday 1 PM so we could discuss and edit things once the outputs were finished, which helped me settle into ...

Today, we still haven't gone back to our RHU duty in Indang, and were informed that a suspension for tomorrow was announced as well. Worried that these suspensions will hinder our ability to make a good local health system report for the Indang RHU, our group asked for approval to go to the RHU tomorrow despite the suspension and gather data needed for the Monday presentation. We were told though, that instead of visiting the RHU, we could instead visit their official social media account for such data. We were also told to observe the disaster response of the Indang RHU during the calamity through their social media account as well, since this is something that is an important part of the population-based health services of a local health system. Our group ended up gathering everyone's insights regarding the Indang RHU's calamity response, so that all of our sentiments are included and considered. Through the suspensions of our RHU duty, the resilience of my fellow Indang ...

Today, since our RHU duty was suspended once more, us first-years spent the early portion of the day printing the health teaching materials that we are going to use to teach the communities in Barangays Guyam Malaki and Guyam Munti about the topics of deworming, the first 1000 days, dengue and its prevention, as well as family planning. Since the second-years assigned with the designing of the materials gave us the go signal for printing the tarpaulins and pamphlets, me and three other first-years who lived near the Cavite State University - Indang campus went to print it in a printing shop near the university. Though the storm was still occurring, we managed to meet up during a time where it temporarily stopped. For the payment for the printing, our immersion group leader Richard said that some of the second-years lent 2500 pesos so that we have money to use immediately for our expenses, and that all of us as a whole will evenly split the final bill spent for everything once the immer...