Community Medicine Weeks 1 & 2

Community Medicine aka Commed is our most awaited rotation during clerkship. Yep, since day 1 in April, we've been looking forward to this rotation.
This vacation-esque rotation is set in the suburbs of Taytay, Rizal, which isn't exactly very far from UERM.  In fact, it's just a G-liner away! But UERM is so kind to fetch us from school every Tuesday to bring us to Taytay. Then come Friday when the same van fetches from Taytay to UERM.
Anyway, here goes photos c/o Pepin Mendieta & FX Mislang.

Basically, this is where we stay--at St. John Calabria Foundation. The place is actually a compound with a clinic, school, and the house where the priest lives. We get to stay in the clinic, which is a 2-storey building with the 1st floor as the clinic and the 2nd floor for the offices and our hostel.

Here goes the bedrooms, which are reminiscent of college. Bunk beds, sharing bathrooms and toilets with 13 other people, and cooking. Good thing laundry is not a problem since I get to go home every weekend. Did I mention that we have weekends off except when we have clinic for 1 Saturday and a 24-hour rotation for forensic medicine at Camp Crame?

Apparently, we only eat fastfood during Tuesday breakfast and dinner. We dedicated our Tuesdays to market day (at SM Taytay, where else?). And the rest of the week goes to cooking like home-cooked meals and not de lata. Our group's greatest fear is hunger. Saying that we eat a lot is an understatement, hehe!

The rest of the day will be, of course, spent as clinical clerks. We have three rotations--clinic, school and community. For the clinic rotation, we work as doctors for the Bro. Perez clinic--as in we get to manage patients on our own. Most of the cases are URTI, though, hehe. For the school rotation, we have to hold a public health lecture, ie lectures on DM, HTN, TB etc. During this rotation, we also visit health centers and manage patients. For the community rotation, we hold a community study. Our target community is the tenement area, which is located quite near to where we stay.

PS

I have already rotated for our forensic medicine in Camp Crame just this weekend! No CSI/NCIS action for me, though.