July 14, 2003

 

Dr. Albert U. Dy

Chairperson

Awards Committee

UP Medical Alumni Society (UPMAS)

UP College of Medicine / Paz Mendoza Bldg.

547 Pedro Gil St., Ermita,

1000 Manila

 

Dear Dr. Dy:

 

I am respectfully nominating in behalf of our class, UPCM 74, our classmate, Dr. Reynaldo O. Joson for the Outstanding Educator (Philippines) Award.

 

Enclosed are:

1.      The UPMAS nomination form with a picture of the nominee

2.      Curriculum vitae of the nominee

3.      Description on how the nominee fulfilled the minimum criteria for the nomination

4.      Details of nominee’s accomplishments in medical education in the Philippines (Appendix)

 

He has met all the minimum criteria for the nomination (see attached summarizing table).

 

We believe that Dr. Joson has devoted himself largely to medical education and excelled in this endeavor in the Philippines since 1990 up to the present.  He has dubbed his mission in medical education as “Education for Health Development in the Philippines.”  All his accomplished projects and ongoing activities can be seen in his website (http://edhedephi.tripod.com).

 

Notable among his achievements in medical education are the following features:

1.      The recipients of his educational mission are not confined to medical students but include surgical residents, hospital administration students, and the lay people or the public as well (he does public advocacy: NO to routine circumcision, beware of santol seed swallowing, and others).

2.      His medical professional recipients are not confined to the UP College of Medicine, Philippine General Hospital, and UP College of Public Health.  They come also from various other medical schools and hospitals in the country.  He reaches these schools and hospitals outside UP Manila and in the provinces both by going intermittently to these places and through a distance mode of education initially through instructional primers and modules in print medium and later through an electronic medium via the internet using webpages and email.

3.      He started his Education for Health Development in the Philippines, when he was the director of the UPCM Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, with a Department of Health-UP College of Medicine Postgraduate Circuit Courses in Four Provincial Hospitals (Luzon - Ilagan, Isabela; Visayas - Aklan; Mindanao - Koronadal, South Cotobato and Oroquieta, Misamis Occidental).  The primary objective of this project was to upgrade the clinical competency of the government physicians manning the provincial hospitals.

4.      He established and developed a general surgery course using a distance mode in Zamboanga City Medical Center from 1991-1997 on his own initiative.  This project produced 7 competent general surgeons who would complement the 3 and only 3 general surgeons in 1997 to serve the surgical needs of the 3 million population of Western Mindanao.  With this project, he pioneered distance education in surgery/medicine in the Philippines.  His work was published in an international journal (Education for Health) and in the UP Manila journal.

5.      He helped established the Zamboanga Medical School Foundation, Inc. (ZMSFI) in 1994 and formulated an innovative curriculum which was community-based, competency-based and problem-based learning.  This curriculum was adopted by the Southwestern University College of Medicine and the Bicol Christian College of Medicine in 1995. 

5.1  As of 2001 data from ZMSFI, the school has produced 19 MD with MPH (Master in Public Health) – synchronous dual degree, the first of its kind in the Philippines and majority of the graduates were municipal health officers in Region 9 contributing to the health development in the area.

5.2  Because of the community-based design of his innovative curriculum, the medical students of the 3 schools adopting his curriculum, before they graduated, were able to contribute to the solution of actual health problems in their assigned communities in Region 9, Region 7 (Cebu), and Region 5 (Bicol).

6.      He helped ZMSFI to become the 2nd medical institution to offer a master in health profession education (MHPEd) in the country, the first being the UP National Teacher Training Center (NTTC) for Health Profession.  As of 2000, ZMSFI has produced at least 8 faculty with a MHPEd.

7.      He established and developed the first Head and Neck Surgical Oncology Fellowship Program in the entire country in 1991.

8.      He established and developed the first structured Surgical Oncology Fellowship Program in the entire country in 1995.

9.      From 2001 to 2003, as chairman, he revived and developed the Department of Surgery of Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center to become a model of Department of Surgery in the entire country in terms of governance, service, training, and research. (http://ommcsurgery.tripod.com)

10. He established the multi-center cooperative and collaborative action research study group in 2001 to solve the health problems in the country through distance education and action research participated by various departments of surgery and surgeons in the country. (http://mcccars.tripod.com)

11. He has written many instructional modules and primers for use by medical students, surgical residents, and students of hospital administrations.

12. He has developed many websites to facilitate his distance education in medicine as well as for health development in the Philippines.

13. He is pioneering and advocating health-process-evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, guidelines which are not just evidence-medicine based, but also based on WHO’s concept of health and based on a rational, effective, efficient, and humane problem-solving and decision-making process. (http://hpecpg_thyroid.tripod.com;http://appendicitismanila.tripod.com)

14. He has formulated a structured, simplified, step-by-step patient management process that facilitates and standardizes problem-solving and decision-making by the physicians on any clinical issue and health problem.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

 

Rex Mendoza, MD

UPCM Class 74