My Indang RHU Immersion Experience: Day 12 - Time to Lock In

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 inventory for the local health system report. 
 

Just as things were going too well, we suddenly got hit with bad news. The health indicator and statistics data that I was assigned to and worked on to prepare for the past few days needed to be remade, since we used data from the FHSIS 2024 reports, and the RHU just now provided us with January to June, 2025 data. This was when I learned that there was no use presenting the 2024 data I had been preparing the past few days, since there is a more recent report that will be more relevant to the current state of Indang's health service delivery, and there is without a shadow of a doubt that this more recent data needs to be included in the local health system report. This recent development had temporarily stunned us, and we were informed of our deadlines for the submission and presentation of our local health system report and our CAM survey report, which were to be due on the 30th and 31st of July respectively. Though I myself began to panic due to the lack of time remaining to work on that data, I admire the response of our leader Richard in quickly delegating tasks to people who weren't originally assigned to the health statistics tasks since he immediately identified that we did not have as much time as we had originally and we needed to work more efficiently moving forward to update our work accordingly. This, I feel, is a key component of what a doctor should be: able to react to abrupt developments and adapt accordingly. Because of their quick decision-making, we were immediately reeled in to the new plan and adjusted our current tasks as needed. Some of us first-years were actually pulled out of our registration area posts to work on the local health system report's data section that needed to be updated, to collaborate with the second-years. Unfortunately though, since there were network connectivity issues, we couldn't continue working on it for long and had to return to our posts. To chip away at the data that needed to be updated though, I began working on it at the registration area, stopping to help with the patients when the lines grew longer. 
 

Just like that, our shift was coming to an end at a blink of an eye, and we gave our evaluation forms for the doctors to answer, sealing them in envelopes afterwards. Though we wished to have spent more time helping around in the RHU and learning more about health centers in general, we thanked the healthcare workers for their excellent guidance and support throughout the immersion program, and ate some pizza with them before officially ending our time at the Indang RHU. Once we got home however, the job was not done. Since we were to present and submit our report output for the local health system report, all of our manpower was focused on finishing our outputs for them. Much to my shame and frustration, my lack of proper communication and issues with finishing the inputting of the 2025 health service delivery data of Indang to our output lead to delays with the completion of our local health system report and presentation. Once again though, I am lucky to have reliable groupmates as most of the second-year students finished inputting and interpreting the majority of the data alongside me, late into the night. Tired, sleepy, yet proud of contributing to the completion of the reports and presentations of the local health system and CAM surveys, we ready ourselves for tomorrow's beginning of presentations.
Location: 6V2F+483, J. Dimabiling Street, Indang, Cavite, Philippines

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