My Indang RHU Immersion Experience: Day 10 - Understanding the Data

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 the mindset of focusing all my time today to working on getting the Indang-specific data from the FHSIS 2024 Calabarzon reports which included all of the health service delivery data we needed to put in the Health Indicators and Statistics Collection section of the local health system report we were making for the Indang RHU. Since I couldn't just copy and paste the tables from the FHSIS documents, it was really challenging to format the data from Indang into our document due to the number of columns and amount of data there was. In addition, even though all the data was present in the website, I still needed to figure out which specific section to put them in. For example, child care and immunization service data needed to be put into the Immunization Coverage section specifically, and there were separate tables for different vaccines like BCG, for Hepatitis B, OPV, IPV, and so on. 

 
The FHSIS Annual Report website where most of the data was obtained from 

I would be lying if I said that it was difficult to do these tasks, but the sheer amount of data that needed to be done to made it seem impossible to finish on time for our deadlines. I learned a lot of different google documents techniques in trying to format the tables of the data, which I am ashamed to admit since I should have already known them by know since I am in medical school. Surprisingly, I really benefited from inputting the data since it got me sort of familiarized with different health delivery services. For example, doing this task got me aware of the existence of PhilPEN or the Philippine Package of Essential Non-Communicable Disease Interventions, which is a program of the department of health which focuses on the early detection, prevention, and management of NCDs like hypertension and diabetes.

 
Examples of the Indang-specific health service delivery data presented in our local health system report output

At one point though, it really felt like I wouldn't be able to get things done on time. Luckily, my fellow first-year student Arbie voluntarily assisted me in finishing the task by splitting up the data categories that needed to be obtained so we could make the load more manageable, and work in a more organized manner. I appreciated this a lot, and it helped me internalize the fact that in the future, as a doctor, I would need to ask for assistance if I really needed it, even if I knew that I might be bothering my fellow healthcare workers, because I should not assume that I can do everything by myself, and that collaboration is the key to success. I ended the day with most of the data work finished, with some left to be handled tomorrow, so I was really satisfied with my work. Seeing our CAM and local health system reports slowly being filled up and completed made me proud of our group's teamwork and collaboration despite the storms and suspensions we faced. I look forward to going back to the RHU on Monday and ending our time there with a job well done.

Location: VAA Homes I, Las Piñas, Metro Manila, Philippines

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