Fifth year a.k.a Postgraduate Internship

You survived senior clerkship! (4th year)

Congratulations! You’ve graduated and earned your Diploma. You now bear the title of a doctor.

…and yay, you still have a loooong way to go!

The 5th year of Medicine is the Post-Graduate Internship year, as most Philippine Medical schools give their diplomas at the end of the 4th year. This is the year you’re no longer a student per se. You will become the Post-Graduate Intern, the “apprentice doctor”.

This is the year you will rotate one last time in all the different fields of medicine – you will be a surgeon, internist, a pediatrician, an obstetrician-gynecologist and a community doctor.

A GLIMPSE OF PGI LIFE:

Every postgraduate interns’ responsibility: Updating the Census

Updating the census means doing patient rounds during and before shift ends

Obligatory picture in the operating room 😂

Milestone: Performing a Spinal Anesthesia Block

My favorite day of the week is having to wear a comfortable pair of sneakers

From clerkship to internship, I have always loved apposing and suturing wounds. I am thankful for our surgical residents for allowing us to suture wounds on our own.

You never had an exciting medical life if you haven’t made yourself a guinea pig

Consider yourself as unfortunate if you’re spending the holidays at the hospital hahaha

During senior clerkship, cafes were meant for burning the midnight oil. In internship, it’s meant to be savored and enjoyed!

Unlimited medical missions

Every after stressful deliveries, spending time with the babies and their button noses and floppy little limbs are just irresistable. Amazing how a single hold can release so much dopamine!!!

NICU and OB PGIs at your cervix! 😉

Somedays, I look human.

Most of the days, I don’t because “busyhon” hahaha

Now that medical internship has ended, I realized that it was the last time, the last chance that I got to be as close to those fields of medicine. After this will come the Philippine Physician Licensure Examination.

Thank you, Perpetual Succour Hospital! In my months of exposure, the culture that I really admire here is respecting every employee (high or low) as significant and part of the health care team. As interns, rarely do we get to be appreciated and respected. I have countless of traumatic experiences during my clerkship days as one of the lowest form of animal in the food chain. However, this environment is so much different and we thank you for that.

I just want to say thank you to all nurses and health aids for helping and assisting us. Thank you also for being the hands and heart of patient care! Thank you to all medical technologists who I endlessly bother in the middle of the night just to get the patient’s laboratory results LOL. Thank you to all cafeteria personnel (especially that one grumpy ate hihi) for cooking the most delicious “chorizo” and “chicken curry”. Thank you, Medrecs! Haha! Thank you to all the hospital staff especially to our amazing doctors! Thank you for including us in every patient’s management. Every department gave junior clerks, senior clerks, and postgraduate interns the opportunity to handle patients from admitting to diagnosing down to treatment. We are grateful for the never ending passion to teach us.

Signing off,

PGI Delbeth