Without the White Coat
By Dr. Florentino Alerta

Irregulars... the challenges of medical school

The challenges of medical school come in different shapes and hues. The depression will set in when goals become unattainable or just simply not fulfilled. Medical school is always a challenge setting, an environment that further trains and molds that medical student into a role that becomes the “saviour of humanity” (the life of a patient depends upon the hands and decision of the physician that takes care of the patient). In the first place there are always the failures that confront us in the years of medical training and practice. For the medical student failing in some subjects in the early years of medical school may become humiliating (never take this as a ridicule, but as a further challenge in pursuant of “that knowledge” in medical career), but it will surely serve as a guiding light for the medical student to strive harder.

The label of “irregular” may connote a negative image on the medical student, but never take it as a negative deterrent on your medical studies, again isn't it at high time now to recall back our deficiencies and try to correct it. By being an “irregular” the medical student will now strive harder since his opportunities becomes narrower every time he lost tract in the road of medical education and training. Always remember that the label “irregular” never stays on the end or before your name after graduating from medical school and earning your medical degree it will only clearly state “Juan Dela Cruz, M.D. or Dr. Juan Dela Cruz, not as Dr. Juan Dela Cruz, irregular.” Just as a person you are already a unique entity in the field of medicine who knows someday you'll be the doctor and physician that will totally eradicate HIV/AIDS infection in the face of the earth and it won't say that you were an “irregular” during your medical school days, the ultimate goal is to finish your medical studies and have that degree of medicine after your name.

Before we have dreamed of becoming as doctors, we may have already ask ourselves what the field of medical practice can offer us, is it just for myself or my community or what all of us doctors have been taught “for the service of humanity” or just a simple book could have guided us to ask further “The Purpose Driven Life” , what in this earth are we here for? Remember that professor/doctor in one of the most unforgettable movie “Patch Adams” telling his medical students “We would make doctors out of you” , doctors that would become so uncompassionate and uncaring for the patient, a doctor that had made his medical career as a business relation with his patient, a practice that is centered in the four corners of the doctor's office, a medical practice based on the professional jealousy and the Filipino crab-mentality in short a medical practice based on greed and envy . A medical practice not basedon an organ system or a group of tissue of the body, but dedicated to the patient in front of us who is a gut-feeling, alive, breathing, sick, and hopeless human being, not just in his/her capability to pay our professional fees, but it is someone that needs our “caring and loving hands” .

Being an “irregular” doesn't hinder us to become as one of the best doctors the world had even seen, remember that the academic status and grades that we attained during our medical school years doesn't gurantee us a succesful practice in the future. As an “irregular” during my medical school days it didn't hamper me to do best things in life and achieved the things that life had offered. For the “irregulars”, never give up pursue that medical career, Good luck and GOD bless.