Hazardous to your health
 

Also known as 6 months of Caregiver Training in the Philippines. I decided to start this thread as an answer to the requests from the guys here asking me about my (mis)adventures while I was in training school. The title says it all.

I'll be telling you guys in the most KISS way possible and without getting sued for slander and libel either about why everything I learned in 6 months of lectures and return demonstration exams got thrown out the window during on the job training, why certain hospitals are Avian Flu and Dengue breeding grounds in the Philippines, and most specially, why my home training with a comatose aunt and her home doctor helped me get through classes and on the job training.

This is going to be a very informative thread. It'll be a peek into the college level medical education system in the Philippines.

Heaven help us all. Let the games begin :worried:

1st Day of Classes
Pre - Class Mental Notes:
1. Make sure I do exactly what the teachers want and do not stand out or be better dressed than the others.
2. Wear makeup (but don't fall into a vat of blush powder and come out looking like Rudolph) , smell nice and clean, and do not stand out otherwise.
3. Sit where I can SEE and HEAR and participate
4. Do not try to be invisible but do not be so visible that I become target practice for classmates.
5. Earn brown-nose points from these teachers

How many of these notes do you think I was able to follow?

up next, What I Learned in the 1st month of class. ;)

Excellent! I can hardly wait. :D

I went to school for 20 years and never learned any of the stuff on that list :(

First 15 Days
 

First 15 Days of Classes:

1. Classes never start at the assigned time. Forget a 3 PM class time even if that is what the class schedule, your level coordinator and registration card says. The teacher says you can come at 3 if you want. But he won't be there till 4. Teachers take days off for birthdays and class gets dismissed early when the teacher has a date or is picked up by her boyfriend.
2. If the students pester the level coordinator enough, Holy Week becomes a legal reason to miss 5 days worth of classes and then play the catch up game at the end of the module.
3. Security at the college is so non existent that I get away with not having a student ID for the rest of the month. A guilty conscience forces me to go get one anyway.
4. A scrub suit is worn during return demo exams. Official color seems to be any shade of green. (Note to self: A Mint Green scrub suit is not a good color to wear in the streets, It starts traffic even when the real traffic light says red and stop.)
5. A lecture means a "temporary lecturer" will come over, give copies of hand outs written in English and then proceed to translate the English tongue to vernacular.
6. Just because there are suggested textbooks, you don't have to buy it because there are hand outs anyway and as long as you can write fast, who needs the books? (I bought both books and saved myself the ink and carpal tunnel syndrome)
7. Turning off the lights and reading off a Power Point presentation to the class is considered a lecture. PS.- It is almost impossible to take notes in that kind of darkness.
8. The Caregivers mantra: "You don't scold the geriatric. You do not hit the geriatric, you do not beat the geriatric." Then always remember the published story of the Filipino caregiver deported for beating his patient who happened to have a toilet accident after being bathed by the caregiver.
9. Following the US Caregivers handbook gets you graded down and in trouble for not doing it the "normal hospital way." More about the normal hospital way in this country when we get to my OJT postings.
10. According to lecturers, the Caregiver's Handbook method written by an American RN for treatment of Americans is WRONG. I believe that is because I was using a US set up for the Return Demonstrations in a Philippine setting. Silly me, I thought we would be caring for AMERICANS and CANADIANS :p
11. My classmates seem to think being a CG is a job they will never have to do even though they are studying it and are using it as their jumping board to leave the Philippines. They all have "options" when they get to wherever it seems and they can just forget their employment contracts. I on the other hand look forward to actually caring and nurturing patients who need it. We'll get to why I feel that way later.

This covers my first 15 days in class. I'll get to the rest of the month tomorrow. In the meantime, my bed beckons me to lie on it and shut my eyes:zzz: .

So you have to actually learn two systems, one to pass the course and one to work anywhere outside the country, as well as not mix them up. They teach you what to do as well as what not to do. That certainly is thorough. :rolleyes:

Fortunately you can do this.

You got that right Bruce. Luckily, I am a fast learner and I got the message after the first 2 return demonstrations. I CAN do this. There is no doubt about it. I can do both methods and much more because I actually bothered to learn the lessons. Both those taught and not taught but happened to be in the US handbook anyway:cool:

That did not sit well with my classmates though. Not that it mattered nor did I care. The proof was in my OJT. Up next, the last 15 days of the 1st month. Think you have to power to keep up with me? 5 more months to go ! :eek:

Go baby go.....or is it, you go girl? I'm inept at being hip.:lol:

A moving target is hard to hit
 

1. American Senior Citizens must spend all their money first and then the government will give them money (take care of them) while the senior can still keep their home and car.
2. Caregivers are basically a little of everything. Nurse, doc, therapist, companion, etc We are supposed to tell the docs about a patients medical history after getting it from the family and stuff.
3. Basically, the job of a CG is to make sure the patient is always presentable at all times, has meals on time, gets around, and takes their medicines on time. And take them to Doc appointments.
4. The best way to prepare for an oral return demonstration practical exam is to keep writing the procedure and rationales down over and over till you use up all 100 sheets of yellow pad paper. Only after doing that and having the same results come out every time even if written in various ways can you be sure that you know your petrissage from your tapotement. You can be sure that you can answer any question no matter how far out of left field it comes from. Just don't let your classmates catch you doing it because it is "not normal" to review that way and they WILL report you to your Testing lecturer who will immediately order you to cease and desist from reviewing that way because it is a really dumb way of doing it. I never stopped doing it and I passed every exam they threw at me. I was too thorough though. I did not leave anything for the tester to ask me anymore while I was giving my demonstration. Sheesh! Looks like I can't ever do anything right by their standards :p
5. As far as my classes have gone, Tonchi summed it up best for me when she said, "In the Phils, it's "We pretend to teach and they pretend to learn". I was damned and made a target in the whole class by this point because I actually was learning something and it wasn't much owing to the lecturers but more because I was pushing myself to learn and do well. At a certain point, I accidentally showed up a lecturer during a demo exam because I was TOO THOROUGH AND WASTING TIME :redface:
6. Being the only over 30 student in a classroom full of teens to twenty something makes you the target of certain lecturers for some strange reason. I never did find out why till the day I finished the course.
7. When getting paired up for a demonstration partner, avoid a partner who is addicted to downloading MP3 songs from the internet if you value your sanity and review time. That person can make exam day a living hell for you.

Coming up, April (mis)adventures :-D

I think it is "You go girl!" I do believe that I actually "Went and conquered" All because I NEED TO.;)

Tell them how it is also "not normal" to pay your tuition and how you were informed of that :3_eyes:

To pay or not to pay...
 

Well, I was told by my classmates that since I had given a downpayment of 7 thousand, I did not need to pay for at least 3 months since the amount covered the monthly fee of 2600 pesos. When I refused and continued to pay at the end of every month I was told by the class president that I was "making everyone else look bad" and that I "wasn't being a team player". Gee, pay the fee and avoid being embarassed by getting a letter from the accounting department, or don't pay and have your classmates like you. What would you choose?

Ah yes. Dengue Fever. The "other" misquito-borne disease. When I was in Brasil, I kept seeing signs warning people not to allow stagnant water ANYWHERE for fear of the dengue. Be safe.

Remind me not to hire any Filipina home health aides for my mom.

So what would you say to a hospital that has an open air aviary in the middle of the hospital grounds. All the ward windows open to the aviary and the mosquitos in the nurse's stations bite so bad it actually hurts? Eventually we pestered housekeeping enough to give us a jar of insecticide and we sprayed our work areas. :3eye: I started wearing mosquito repellant to work too. Somehow mosquitos like my blood. I think they find it to be the perfect blend of sweetness and sweat :p

We seemed to be having a lot of Dengue admittances. I actually had a patient start a nose bleed so bad that the blood hit my face when he blew. Not much we could do for him except give transfusions and try to keep the fever down. I think Dengue is an illness that has to be ridden out. It is either the body cures itself or it doesn't :sniff:

Wolf, the ones who got here more than 10 years ago are fine. Those are the ones who went throught the educational system before the populist movement decided to take the country back to the stone age and not teach English or have any ethical or merit standards anymore because those were symbols of the evil "colonialist" mentality of the First World and discriminatory. As I believe we said elsewhere, more than half of the nurse/caregiver types that get a visa to the US now are rejected and sent back because they can't speak English well enough to understand instructions or pass even one of the certification exams which most states require. Luisa is considered a bad influence, she has an annoying habit of seeking perfection.

I should think the instructors would expect an older student, in a pack of youth, to understand life better and be more serious. At 30, it would be time to get your shit together and work on the future.
Don't tell me their worried about the kids self-esteem?
Hey, maybe they want to produce incompetents that can't leave the country. :idea:

Be careful not to annoy them too much, they still could mess you up if they so desired. You know how easy it would be to lose your records.... a few times. Play the game enough to let them think they've won. ;)

Bruce, you are talking about a country which kicks you OUT of the workforce at the age of 30 and will not hire you under any circumstances. They do not even accept your application. One of the reasons Lu is taking Nursing classes is they kick you out at 45 in that field only. The Phils also has a government agency which is tasked with getting as many people out of the country as possible. At this time they are mostly concentrating on shoving out as many males as possible into the slave market of the Middle East, working in construction or as deck hands or truck drivers. The Nursing exports have hit something of a snag because the agency discovered that too many of them were being deported back to the Phils in disgrace. It causes them to lose face, they actually could not care less whether the girls had the training or ability to actually DO the jobs they were leaving for.

And yes, it is all too easy to annoy one of the gatekeepers at these places. They have already thrown every stumbling block possible in Lu's way, the latest is they can't give her the diploma because the hospital claims to have not received the money she paid to the school.

That sucks, I suppose even if she gets the diploma, which are easy to forge, prospective employers or emigration/immigration officials checking back with the school could find there is no record of her attending. :(

Bruce, they don't seem to have any problem with the incompetents leaving the country. They have a problem with people who actually know what they are doing and can show up the bad products that they do manage to export. There is no money in it for the corrupt examiners to pass / certify somebody who actually knows the job. So they will make you pass through the eye of a needle to get what you want. Put you in a vice grip till you decide to "deal" with them. :p I am hoping I will be lucky enough to not get caught in the vice grip when I take the government mandated exam.

Trust me, it does not matter whether I annoy them or not. They pretty much manage to mess up on their own. If there is anything these people don't seem to have a problem getting into, it is SNAFU :3eye:

They are still trying to resolve the issue of the exam answers leakage in the 2006 Nursing board exams. There is a big debate on whether everyone should retake (whether they cheated or not) or if it should be a selective retake. The Court of Appeals ruled that it should be a "selective retake" based on certain guidelines. Personally? I would not hire anybody in this year's batch of graduates for the simple reason that you never know who really did cheat and who did not. I would not risk another person's life in their hands if there is even a shadow of a doubt about his/ her competency. I say they should all retake it! Besides, with all the hype the incident created, I doubt a decent country would hire them.

Oh, they finally got the money forwareded to them by the accounting department of the school. Now they are insisting I owe them 3 day's worth of training. I told them to go back and read my request letter and check their logbooks, I already paid for my excused abscence! Now they say 3-4 days for the training certificate and then 2 weeks for my diploma :eyebrow:

Bruce, rest assured that any documents I PRESENT are authentic and God knows how hard I have worked to get those papers LEGALLY. I have practically invested my own sweat and blood to get this far. Our school transcript is supposedly to be forwarded to the Office of the President of the Philippines in Malacanang Palace where it will receive a RED RIBBON of sorts that will signify its authenticity and shall be our official transcript to be presented to employers. I have yet to find out if that applies only to agency applications though. All the Overseas Workers of the Philippines are required to have their transcripts authenticated in that manner in order to avoid "faking" it.

I have worked too long and hard to gamble my future on any fake documents :sniff: Wish me luck...

No, no, I wasn't suggesting you have, or should mess with, fake papers. I'm saying papers are so easy to counterfit most employers check with the school for transcripts.... at least here they do.
So even if you get out with the right papers, they could screw you later if they wanted to..... at least until you have previous employers a new employer could check with, instead of the school. Peace. :D

No offense taken. No harm, no foul :) I was just trying to point out how the government is trying to make it harder to fake documents by adding safeguards. But that is not to say that something won't fall through the cracks if you really want to find a way to cheat :thepain:

Luisa can tell some funny stories about fake documents, xob. All of her life she was told by her relatives how stupid and useless she was, nevertheless she managed to graduate from college after paying for it out of her own money. As part of the systematic abuse her aunts practiced on her, she was not even allowed to walk the stage and collect her diploma. When her half-brother was bugging her aunt to get his birth and school documents for a job application, they discovered that he had not even graduated from high school and the last two years of college he did not even attend classes and so he obviously did not graduate. But he collected the "tuition" money from their grandfather regularly, got petted and praised by the aunts, and reported that he was getting excellent grades, had graduated, had lots of offers, etc. Lu already knew that her nephew had not been able to graduate from high school and the aunts had purchased his diploma. It is probably safe to say that MOST applicants for any job, school, visa, or award in the Philippines are using counterfeit documents to support many of their "accomplishments." Luisa does not, everything she has is top of the line and earned by her. In return for that, she is hated and shunned, she does not "fit in", she is not a "team player". She is "dangerous".

Don't forget that nepotism works very well in the Philippines. Job offers are aplenty when your parents are well connected and have the money to "buy" you a job. Even better if they can give you a business for a graduation gift. Whether you deserve it or not. If none of the aforementioned apply to you, the Philippines does not have unemployment or welfare. Good luck to the basic workperson :mad:

If money can be counterfeited, anything can.
I never had an original birth certificate, just a form signed by a town clerk my folks needed for something or other. It was good enough to get a passpot with, though.

A couple years ago the US Army required proof of citizenship from Boeing for all employees. Original birth certificates only, no photostats, not even my expired passport would do.

I signed an authorization and Boeing got me a real birth certificate, showed it to the Army and mailed it to me, no charge. Now I know, if I stub my toe, that's real pain....I have the papers to prove it. :D