My Indang RHU Immersion Experience: Day 9 - The Storm Persists

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 RHU groupmates surprised me as they showed no sign of slowing down and continued to find areas of improvement in the different outputs we were preparing. Their persistence and discipline is something that to be honest, is something that I am lacking in, and things that I want to be part of my strengths.
 
For our local health system report, I ended up getting assigned to the "Health Indicators and Statistics Collection" part of our output, which would include the health service delivery statistics of the Philippines. Though at first I was a bit lost because I did not know what kind of specific data I needed to get and where to get them, I got informed that the Field Health Service Information System (FHSIS) DOH website had the information that I needed in their 2024 Calabarzon reports, and that we were already given examples of what data to collect, so all I needed to do was to get the Indang data and input them properly into our local health system report. Looking at the reports, I learned a lot about how much data is being gathered, and the sheer amount of it really reinforced the idea that as a doctor, I should be regularly consulting such data so that I know what issues needs to be addressed in my area of practice. 


 
Now knowing what I needed to work on over the long weekend, I went ahead and did the necessary folding and cutting to our health teaching pamphlets so that they were ready for use, so that I could focus solely on the data collection and formatting assigned to me. Since tomorrow's RHU duty was cancelled as well, I went back home to Las Piñas so that I won't end up trapped in my Indang dormitory in case the storm becomes really strong, determined to contribute to our local health system report to lighten the load of my fellow Indang RHU groupmates.
Location: 5VVJ+MHW, Indang, Cavite, Philippines

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