October 28th, 2009
CoMMED Diaries Week 1
October 22, 2009
Today was thursday, our first day of clinic in Barangay Hugom.
Yesterday's clinic was easy. We got to know the BHW's of Laiya the day
before the clinic and the people were friendly and accommodating. Also
there seemed to be a steady health system in place. This is because
Laiya Aplaya was one of the first barangays in San Juan to get
organized.
Hugom was very different. The people were less warm, for lack of a
better term. It's not negative.. It's just an observation. Maybe it's
cultural, maybe the Hugom BHW'se just take a little more time to warm
up. But there I was, thrown out of my comfort zone, with people who
were not responding as I expected when I reached out. And so I
realized then and there, it was so much easier to sit and wait for
patients. That I was really grateful when a patient would come for a
check up because I would have reprieve from the stony silence.
Then I realized, I was glad because I was relegated back to a role I
was comfortable in. Perhaps the reason why the health provider role
seems to be the one being taken on by most of the interns is because
this is our comfort zone. We have been trained to talk to patients and
diagnose diseases and provide remedy. We spent four years studying and
training for that role. But when have we ever trained to be social
mobilizers? to be catalysts and community organizers? In truth we are
just people and the community, they are just people as well. We don't
get to be social mobilizers enough in the community because we haven't
had the training. The on the ground experience.
I would like to think that my background would provide me some sort of
advantage: we have been having community immersions since high school,
I belong to an organization where part of the day to day is reaching
out to people and getting them to open up. I was president of our
Medicine Student Council, so I know how to negotiate.
But no matter how much you prepare, no matter how much you think your
past experience has prepared you for this, you fall short.
There is no formula to people. Perhaps it would take years for me to
train in interacting with people to be comfortable in a community
organizer's role. Howe can I be a social mobilizer when I am not
accepted. Becoming accepted takes both skill AND emotional investment
in the community. No amount of training will prepare you for every
commmunity you will immerse in.
I think training in Community, like medicine should be day to day. We
are in the hospital everyday for 730 days straight. We live we breathe
hospital. We know hospital. So when we go to community, we take a
hospital mentality with us. I suppose there is no middle ground for
community medicine. Either you're in the community or you're not. And
when you can't live and breathe community, you can't really be effective