Today for my FCH 101 class (Health Care Delivery) we were told the story of Rosario. The story takes place in a barrio named "Tanyong" and the story touches on the quality of life in that barrio. We were also given details of Rosario's family members and their specific roles in Rosario's life.
In the end, Rosario dies of severe diarrhea and fever. The task for the day was to determine what exactly caused Rosario's death.
The most obvious reason for Rosario's death was sickness, but we were challenged to ponder on the question more critically. What caused the sickness? Malnutrition. What caused Rosario to develop malnutrition? And so on and so forth. We used details from the story to come up with logical answers to our investigation.
In the end we identified numerous root causes of Rosario's death. Some of these were poverty, corruption, poor sanitation, poor infrastructure, poor patient education, poor job opportunities for the poor, shortage of health workers, etc.
As a future doctor, it is important that I realize that my role is not limited to being a clinician. Health is defined as the state of total well-being of a person, and it transcends the presence or absence of disease. Included in its scope are things such as freedom from poverty, proper education, sanitation, etc. As such, it falls within my duty as well to also address the rest of the things which caused Rosario's death, and not only the severe diarrhea and fever.
Our facilitator for the day emphasized this, and pointed out that as students of the College of Medicine we are expected to practice community-oriented medicine, with an emphasis on the social determinants of health (social, economic, and political factors such as those which caused Rosario's death).
It's quite daunting to think that our roles are so much more than meeting patients in the clinic. As doctors of the College of Medicine it is also our role to make a difference in the greater scheme of things, for if we were to simply cure our patients and send them back to the conditions which caused the disease, what good would it be for them?
It makes me a bit relieved that I chose to accept INTARMED as my course in college because I entered it expecting a profession which would help me to serve others and make a difference in society. A desire to serve was one of the reasons why I chose INTARMED over my other interests, namely music and math, so I am relieved that I chose the perfect profession for the job. Medicine truly is a profession which is inseparable from service to the underserved. Doctors truly are heroes.
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