Week 37, 2012: Endorsements

WHILE THE REST of my classmates were buried in piles upon piles of things-to-do for their patients at the wards, we in Service Three decided to have lunch elsewhere—that is, in the nearby mall. We only had three or four existing patients, most of them about to be discharged. What joy!

Our seniors treated us to pizza and pasta, which we devoured mercilessly, while some of us did 10-minute reports on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, infective endocarditis, among other interesting  medical conditions. We had a quiz afterwards. I'm still amazed at the devotion our residents have shown in teaching, grilling, and advising us, something other clinical departments in PGH may want to emulate.

Here were Dr. Marc Gregory Yu, who's about the same age as I am and whose accent has a striking Ilonggo feel to it, and Dr. Gelza Zabat, our service senior, who also took molecular biology as an undergrad course.



Dr. Tinay Janer was our service's pre-resident; I hope she'd make it to the IM residency program. Dr. Annabelle Lat is one of our first year residents. She's a joy to work with, and I like it when she helps me through the thought process of understanding the clinical cases we're handling.



To make the most of our time, Ma'am Gelza, whom we love dearly, gave brief lectures on ABG interpretation and ECG reading!



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I DECIDED to undertake a mini-project of taking portraits of people while they're in the middle of endorsing their patients to the duty team of the day. Different people sport different expressions.

For instance, look at Lennie Chua, who has beads of sweat trickling down her face.



Carlos Cuano answers his way out of difficult questions by way of his Justin Bieber charm.



Bryan de Gracia keeps his notes close to prepare for a deluge of questions.



But nothing comes close to this look of surprise, shock, or constipation—it really depends on how you look at it—that Denden Dalmacion had when Dr. Lat asked her about systemic lupus erythematosus.