Patients are the best teachers

Having topped the recent licensure examination for physicians, Angeli Andrea Cocos could have her pick of medical schools and hospitals abroad to train and eventually practice in.

But this 25-year-old is doing her residency here, and has no intention of practicing abroad. She says she’d be “embarrassed” working in a foreign hospital, being a graduate of the University of the Philippines, a state-funded university.

“I can’t imagine myself serving a foreign patient. I am from UP, iskolar ng bayan, so I was sent to school by my country,” she says, although she may go abroad to study and train, she will definitely come back and practice here.

Ann believes there is still a lot to learn, and she would learn from the patients that she has pledged to serve.

“For me they are the best teachers,” she says. “You read medical cases from the books, you hear about them from your professors, but it’s different when you see them in person, moving and talking.”

A graduate of the University of the Philippines-Manila, Ann should have taken the August 2013 examination with her batchmates, but the test fell on the Saturday, a day which a Seventh Day Adventist like her believes should be dedicated only to God. Her score of 88.17 percent in the board examination given by the Professional Regulation Commission early last month bested 425 other passers, out of 815 who took the exams.

She did her internship also at the UP-Philippine General Hospital (PGH). “It was a fun learning experience for me. I got to meet a lot of people and a I learned a lot because PGH has many patients. There were also many residents (doctors) and consultants who were willing to teach us and they are really good,” she says.

During her internship she experienced losing a patient when a liver cirrhosis patient whom she was assigned to help manage died.

“I cried when we were resuscitating him. He recovered… but died eventually,” says Ann, who even now tears up when recalling the incident. “His family was so sweet. His wife was hands-on in taking care of him so I really got attached to them. He was only in his 30s.”

Ann was advised by some doctors to learn to detach herself from patients. But this self-confessed crybaby knows it would be hard for her to do so. Besides, she does not want to be numb to suffering and death, worried she might lose her passion for and dedication to helping her patients.

“I don’t want to be numbed because if you are numbed you would no longer take pity on your patients,” she points out. “These patients do not care if you are a board topnotcher or not. All they are after is how you take care of them.”

She adds, “I don’t want to reach a point where I no longer care about what happens to my patients.”

Ann is taking her residency at the UP-PGH but she has not decided which field she will specialize in. She says it is a toss-up between internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology and pediatrics.

Since she was a child, Ann knew she would become a doctor. There was nothing else that she wanted to do but to heal people.

“Maybe because I grew up with my mom who is a doctor and my dad who is a nurse. I cannot think of any other path but this. I also prayed to God to show me the way and he led me to this path,” she narrates.

Her mother Percida is an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Manila Adventist Medical Center (formerly Manila Sanitarium) in Pasay City, while her dad Eduarte has been working as a company nurse in the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. for 33 years now. Ann was in fact born in Saudi Arabia.

Her two sisters, Christine Camille and Steffie Grace, are taking up medicine at the University of the East-Ramon Magsaysay.

Her youngest brother Timothy Edson is in Grade 8 and is living in Saudi Arabia with their father. “We decided to send him to Saudi because my dad was getting lonely and my brother needs a father figure,” she shares.

Ann and her boyfriend Ron Paulo Alcantara, a nurse at the Manila Adventist Medical Center, have been together for six years now, but they have known each other since high school.

Ann, who also plays the piano and used to be a member of the church choir, says that marriage is not in their plans anytime soon, but she hopes to settle down before she reaches 30.

Ann says her mother has always been telling them that being a doctor is not only about healing an illness.

“My mom told us we should also heal our patients mentally, emotionally and spiritually. She said sickness does not only pertain to the body and that patients could also have problems in the family that are affecting their condition,” she claims.

Ann recalls that when she was assigned to the hospice ward for terminally-ill patients, she asked some patients and guardians if they wanted her to pray over them. Many agreed but she earned weird stares from others in the ward.

“I think the entire ward found me weird. Some could have thought I wanted to do it because they were dying. Somehow I got embarrassed but I’m willing to help them anyway I can,” she says.