Is there a doctor in the house?

While the notion that doctors no longer make house calls is generally true, there is a team of dedicated family medicine specialists who do make house calls on indigent patients who suffer from terminal illnesses for which medical science can no longer provide a cure. Instead of simply giving up on these patients, the University of Sto. Tomas Hospital’s Kalinga Pamilya Family Health Care Program (FHCP) brings hope and care to the patient and his/her family.

STARweek was introduced to the FHCP by Luisa Ticzon during the interview at the UST Hospital. The fchp core is composed of "people person" doctors who not only treat individual patients but entire families. Doctors Jake Ramiro, Alex Pineda, Evangeline Yu-Maglonzo, Wilhelmina Mercado, Theresa Torres-Cosme and Ma. Victoria Pilares-Cruz have dedicated their careers to caring for both patients and caregivers, and training a new generation of family medicine practitioners. Family medicine is not the most popular or lucrative of practices, but it is the aspect of medicine in which a doctor’s human side counts for a lot. There are currently some 7,000 doctors who are part of the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians.

Most of the patients referred to FHCP are "bed-ridden and cannot go to the hospital to see the doctor as regularly as the doctor would like," explains Jake. "Since they cannot come to us, we go to them. We also provide medical and psycho-social care to the caregivers...who may suffer from emotional and physical exhaustion, especially if the patient suffers from a terminal disease and has been sick for a long time."

The care begins when a patient is referred to FHCP, "about three days before the patient is due to leave the hospital, especially if the patient has to have a feeding tube and other special care," says Jake. "We teach the caregivers how to manage the medical equipment properly."

Jake also reveals, "It is important for the family to know the prognosis that the patient is terminally ill, and all the hospital can provide is supportive management."

Social services and linkages are provided by the program, with FHCP staff coordinating with community agencies and allied health professionals who can assist the patient and the family, the latter even after the patient dies. Life after stress and bereavement, not death, marks the last phase of the program’s work.

The FHCP brochure quotes from English poet Emily Dickinson: "If I can ease one aching life,/ or cool one pain,/ or help one fainting robin/ unto his nest again,/ I shall not live in vain." This is, as those whose lives the program has touched said, medicine from the heart. – Alma S. Anonas