In
celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Silliman University
Medical School (SUMS), the first of the Alumni Scientific Conferences was held
on August 21, 2015, 8 AM at the Physician’s Hall highlighting a talk by Dr.
Georgitha Partosa-Sasing. It was attended by all 245 SUMS students and several
of its faculty members.
Intended
to be established as an annual event hereafter, the conferences are designed to
feature successful graduates of SUMS aiming not only to inspire the medical
students but to give experience-infused updates in the various fields of
Medicine, according to Dr. Jonathan Amante in his opening speech. The idea was
born from compounded efforts to make the 10-year anniversary celebration of the
school extra special. "It was initiated and led by Doc Walden [Ursos] and
it was the Junior Interns who coordinated with the speaker,” Mr. Giesryl Tee,
head of the Academics Committee, admits.
With 10 years to look back into,
one indeed cannot help but wonder what had happened to the very first students
who walked the halls of SUMS long before us.
The
answer gets to tell her own story herself as Dr. Georgitha Partosa-Sasing, one
of the school’s first eleven students, graces SUMS with her presence once
again, only this time, not as a student dabbling at medicine but as an
accomplished Public Health Doctor.
She starts by sharing how it all
started for her. Medical School came as a surprise when she got to be one of
the lucky few to be granted a scholarship by the Negros Oriental Provincial
Government, giving her a chance at pursuing her dream of becoming a doctor. She
shares: “I was the only one in jeans [during the school interview] because I
[had just been from] the ICU taking good care of my sick grandmother”.
Dr.
Walden Ursos adds to the reminiscing saying he remembers Dr. Georgitha because
she was his borrowed assistant in the decoration of the bulletin board which
happens to be needed before the official opening of the Silliman University
Medical School in 2005.
“And she was the first SUMS
candidate for the Miss Silliman [pageant]”, Dean Jonathan Amante
enthusiastically caps the trip to memory lane.
Dr.
Partosa -Sasing is currently the Medical Officer III of the Inapoy Primary
Hospital in Mabinay, Negros Oriental. In line with her field of specialty, she
introduced the Philippine Primary Health Care with all its delights and
challenges (mostly political) to her young audience with such passion, avidly
stating at one point “We went to empower them, to capacitate them”, effectively
reminding the medical students of the pressing and pervasive need for
healthcare waiting just outside the walls of the medical school, and the
indispensability of the their future profession to the nation.
Somehow, her story became a
reminder of the real reason why we want to become doctors.
For this, though her co-speaker who was supposed to give a
face to Anesthesiology was not able to attend due to health reasons, the
assembly poured out of the Physician’s Hall very far from empty-handed.
“It was a successful,
enlightening first [Alumni Scientific Conference], I think”, one of the 3rd
year students commented.
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