Trans-Pacific Education in Rehabilitation Medicine during the COVID-19 Pandemic

It’s been a busy two months with Rehabilitation Medicine education!

Photos courtesy of the Department of Rehabilitation (left) Medicine, and Dr. Renald Peter T. Ramiro (right)

Let’s start with the clinical field I am most passionate about. The Philippine General Hospital Department of Rehabilitation Medicine is celebrating its 50th year as a department with Insights: Looking In & Beyond, a monthly webinar series of special topics in Rehabilitation Medicine. I had the honor and privilege of speaking on Performing Arts Medicine last March 14th, along with Dr. Renald Ramiro from Cebu as reactor, and Dr. Frances Carlos as moderator. I’m excited to bring this young field to the Philippines – so much potential, so much need. Grateful to the department and all the organizers for this opportunity. Hoping to collaborate with the department next year and beyond.

During the first webinar in January, I learned that the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine split off from the Department of Radiology in 1971. Which does make sense, because of the shared heritage in the physical aspects of medicine. Anyway – previous speakers in the last two months were my very good friends Marjorie Oropilla and Ma. Fides Pacheco, with more monthly speakers all the way till September (they’re lined up, but the department has not announced the schedule yet).

That was March. In February, the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Faculty of Medicine and Surgery had a two-week series of Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation lectures. They put together this lecture series in celebration of a bunch of things – the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery’s 150th year, UST Hospital’s 75th year, the Department’s 50th year, and the Residency program’s 45th year. Dr. Niña Tamayo put out a call for spinal cord injury physiatrists interested in teaching, so Sophia Del Fabro, Sujin Lee and I got together to do a set of talks over Zoom. I was on vacation (COVID-19 related travel changes unfortunately got in the way) and gave the lecture from a hotel room in Hobart, Tasmania, whose wifi unfortunately dropped out three slides into my talk. Oh well, tech difficulties happen. Overall it went well.