Ex-hospital director hits medical education

A known ophthalmologist and former medical director of the Santo Tomas University Hospital lamented the present state of medical education and medical practice.

"Thus values and priorities are mandated by economic agenda with rampant teaching of pseudoscience and unethical methods. Time-tested methods of teaching as grand rounds and clinico-pathologic conferences have been nonchalantly assassinated. Gone are subjects as Apologetics and Rational Psychology," said Dr. Conrado Banzon in a speech before the Catholic Physicians Guild of the Philippines.

Banzon added: "Sadly also, hospitals are accredited neither according to the competence of (their) staff nor commitment to science but rather based on ancillary and expensive instruments and material affluence of (their) clientele. Forgotten is the original concept of a hospital as a refuge of the poor, destitute, orphans and marginalized cared for by mendicant friars and dedicated fraternal orders."

Banzon said hospitals are now "the haven of the rich and powerful," adding that "even the place of death has become a status symbol; the rich must die in the ICU of a ‘high-end’ hospital, comatose with numerous tubes and contraptions attached."

In the same vein, he lamented that patients are now "classified as A, B, C, E, etc. according to their income, forgetting that all men are made in the image and likeness of God."

"Patients are treated not as patients but as business commodities with a market value. For the same reason hospitals scandalously advertise as being better than the others, including hospitals in the developed countries. And to add venom to the already poisoned brew, those opposed are wantonly labeled as ‘inimical’!" he said.

In this unfortunate milieu, he said students and the public are made to understand that the medical profession and the science upon which it is founded are "totally dedicated to monetary and material objectives."

Banzon believes that Catholic education must be reoriented to old traditions.