This year, 2020, marks the UP College of Medicine’s (UPCM) 115th year of educating doctors committed to a life of service, honor, and excellence; and first time to graduate a class who rose through a pandemic not only with their academic competence but with their imagination and creativity. 

The UPCM Class of 2020, whom UPCM Dean Charlotte Chiong, referred to as the Hiraya Class composed of 158 graduates, will go down in history as the first UP medical graduating class under the COVID-19 pandemic whose internship was put on hold; but who channeled their creative energies serving and learning in other ways. The members helped organize and run a call center called the UPPGH COVID-19 Bayanihan Operations Center, helped repurpose the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) as a COVID referral hospital, and organized and extended assistance to health workers and patients in different ways; all the while treating these also as opportunities to continue learning and preparing themselves as the country’s future doctors.

Speaking to the graduates, Atty. Jose Manuel Diokno, founding Dean of the De La Salle University College of Law and Free Legal Assistance Group Chair, reminded them of the people’s high expectations for them to be not only excellent health care practitioners but to help pave the way for a better, more equitable, and a more just healthcare system. 

“We look to you to treat and heal our physical ailments and keep our society alive and well. We want you to be not just doctors but doctors serving the Filipinos, communities who need help the most, families with the least access, and individuals who are often left behind and forgotten.”

The son of the late senator and nationalist Jose W. Diokno, he recalled his father’s advice to him years ago but is still appropriate today. It is the importance of having a nationalist conscience that will prevent one from doing what can hurt the people as a whole even though it may help one’s business, one’s families, or oneself; and a conscience that may make one condemn whoever puts personal interests ahead of the people’s interests.

“If there is anything COVID has taught us, it is that we’re only as healthy as the weakest of us. And the same thing goes with our society, a country is only as rich as the poorest of us , only as strong as the most vulnerable. And for better or worst in very much the same way, your work as doctors often for the nation, will be judged not by looking at the healthiest, strongest Filipinos, but by the most vulnerable ones. We will be judged not where healthcare system is the most robust but where it breaks down and is the worst.” 

He told the graduates what they signed up for when they entered the UPCM — that honor comes before excellence, that compassion and competence are two sides of the 
same coin, and that service is the epitome of success. “One hundred fifty eight good doctors like you would be enough to serve as the clearest, strongest voice of conscience this country has ever had especially in trying times like this; and you have the power to change this country, if not the world, for the better as I am sure you will, someday, very soon.”

Atty. Diokno was introduced by Chancellor Carmencita Padilla as a human rights lawyer, litigator, candidate for Supreme Court Associate Justice  which he later served in several committees, and 2019 senatorial candidate. He has written training manuals and trained journalists, law enforcers, and human rights defenders.

Responding on behalf of the graduates, Dr. Uriel C. Cachero recalled their painstaking journey and the lessons learned and realizations made along the way; of going beyond and above their duties to get things by, and of seeing patients’ socio-economic context, not only their health conditions. Recounting his inability to attend his grandfather’s funeral due to clerkship duties, he stated that what they went through was more than just difficult. “These hardships were enough to last us a lifetime. These experiences will be our weapon. While we did not come out unscathed, we are now stronger, we can make things better for those who will come after us. To be a doctor is to join in the people’s struggles. Our fight is just beginning.”

Cynthia Villamor | Published in Healthscape Special COVID-19 Issue No. 13