blessed_shaula

Hmmm… It’s been a while since I last posted something in here. I am even quite surprised with the setting changes. This is actually way better than before.

The year is almost over but I feel like just getting started. I started this year dying… now it’s blasting! This is the very fulfillment of God’s message for me during my New Year celebration with Him at Boracay.

Whatever people may see or hear about me now… I beg to disagree that this is just all about how lucky I am. Luck never worked for me and it will never be. Behind my smiles were untold stories of pain, tears and sacrifices. It’s only God’s grace that sustained me during those impossible moments. This has been going on up to now. It is a continuous process of breaking and pruning.

Today, I have received what I have been promised. I came to the Centennial Hall of Manila Hotel today to claim what God had in store for me. It’s the privilege of serving my country through my profession. I am now a full-fledged Nurse-Midwife… with the bonus of having a medal and a certificate of distinction.

The whole oath taking ceremony was supposedly very exciting for me… it turned out heartbreaking. I found out that the reasons why those sitting at the same table with me, cream of the crop as they call us, excelled at the boards. Mostly are very self-centered motivations. Nobody is taking the profession itself as a vocation or calling.

The board topnotchers were seated at the table in front of the hall. This basically gave me a good view of the entire hall. As I was sitting there, I was looking at the crowd of midwives that populated the oath taking ceremony. I was wondering how many of them are really going to pursue the hard core job of being a midwife. This country produces thousands of nurses, midwives and other health care professionals yet there always seem to have scarcity of health workers.

 I am talking from experience because I got best worlds when it comes to my practice as a Nurse-Midwife. I get to work at the hospital on regular working days then I also get to work at a community healthcare setting during day offs. Both are voluntary jobs though. At the hospital, we are always under staff. When I go to medical missions, all the more I get heart-broken because I work with foreigners. I was thinking… we don’t need them but why are they here? Why can’t we take care of our own people? For crying out loud… we have thousands of new healthcare professionals quarterly each year!

The reason why I did well on the midwifery boards was not because I am lucky or I am intelligent. I am neither of the two. I studied by heart not just by brains. As I was studying for the test, I was also listing all the dreams and plans that I got to conceive out of enthusiasm and disappointments as well. Little by little, I got to realize why God had opened this door for me. All along, He’s gearing me up for Public Health.

All the achievements I got this year, they were all conceived by dreams and battle cries… brokenness and disappointments. Every test I took has something to do with the path where God is navigating me. I can’t help but wonder during the ceremony today. How about the rest of them? Where are they heading? May God’s mercy be upon us all!

Most nurses took the test because they wanted to add another suffix to their names. The RN-RM thing  would probably help on gaining extra footage at the steep competition. Others took it because they were told to do so by their boss… basically to save the name of the school they’re working for. So they didn’t care less if their test credentials were hoax! Anything is possible in this country when it comes to legitimacy. A board topnotcher, an excellent student who always tops the boards, claims that she wanted to redeem herself by excelling at the tests because she wasn’t given just awards during her college graduation. It’s all about being the number one! Another topnotcher–offered by his school with 100,000 Php + free nursing education if he were to top the midwifery boards. On the other hand, let’s talk about a regular examinee. I’ve talked to a woman on her 40’s during my lunch at the 2^nd day of board exams. She only wanted to get a license because she’s planning to be a caregiver abroad. She doesn’t even need the midwifery license for that. Obviously, she’s lost. How about the younger ones that I got to mingle with during breaks? No one really wants to actually do the real midwife’s roles. They just want the license too. They can’t even say why.  

I can go on with more stories. It’s even worse if I get to tell the details. This is the sad reality we are now facing. Nobody knows where we are heading. The health care system of this country is at the verge of collapsing while everybody is so busy thinking of their own petty selfish issues.