About Me
Hi! Welcome to my website, a virtual home for my (too) many interests.*
I am a Rehabilitation Medicine physician, also known as a physiatrist. Too often we physiatrists get quizzical looks and additional questions when we identify ourselves. Psychiatrist? Physical Therapist? No, but we work with them.
Here’s the conventional summary of my professional life on LinkedIn and a bit more from ORCID.
I consider myself a general Rehabilitation Medicine physician who happens to have extra training. After graduating from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine (INTARMED program), I undertook residency at Temple University Hospital/MossRehab in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania followed by a fellowship in Spinal Cord Injury Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh (at the other end of the state in western Pennsylvania). I am Board Certified by the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and I also have board certification in the subspecialty of Spinal Cord Injury Medicine.
My introduction to physiatry during medical school came through Performing Arts Medicine, which marries the vocation (medicine) and the avocation (music – piano, guitar, choral singing). To that end, I was happy to get formal training in Performing Arts Medicine with the completion of a Graduate Certificate from Shenandoah University.
After years of being involved in academic medicine teaching trainees, I am now on temporarily got on the flip side as a postgraduate student: currently I am on my I completed my “expensive two-year sabbatical from clinical medicine”, pursuing a Master of Culture, Health and Medicine degree at the Australian National University. The degree is jointly offered by the College of Arts & Social Sciences and College of Health & Medicine as the required courses incorporate disciplines from both colleges. The broad curriculum combines medical anthropology with public health, while also happily incorporating my interests in the medical humanities and communication in healthcare.
Once done with my sabbatical, I would eventually like to cobble I am still cobbling together a living involving academic and clinical medicine combined with my multiple interests, and perhaps throw in some other side gigs as well. I think my career is headed in the right direction. We’ll see! Lifelong learners like me are always open to new horizons.
You can read more about my many interests, having a foot in the sciences and the other in the arts, and how I want to weave them all together in the introduction to the blog: WORMHOLE. Words On Rehabilitation, Medicine, Humanities, Old Stuff [History], Language and Education.
* Such as photography. Plus you can view the rest of my digital footprint here.
