Fr Mars Tan, President of Xavier University -Ateneo de Cagayan, Dr Juliet Dalagan, Academic Vice President, Mr Jun Rangie Obispo, Registrar, Dean Myra Maria Peralta of the School of Medicine , Dr Mavyn Lee Ladlad, Advance Medicine Coordinator, Faculty of the School of Medicine, Parents , Guests and the Graduates of 2026 Batch Insignis- A Pleasant and Happy morning to you all. Today must be one of the sweetest and triumphant moment in your lives … after all that you have been through to get where you are today….Yes, a chapter has been finished ….yet in reality , there are still more chapters to go through if the journey to become the physician you envisioned yourselves to be has to reach the desired finish line. Somewhere along the way, your journey shall be enriched by the events and the people that come your way. Today, I would like to take you back to the qualities of what makes you an Atenean doctor. It maybe a cliché , but one of the principles of adult learning is “ we learn by repetition” so I hope you will indulge me. I always will remember what my father used to remind me and my siblings when it comes to our studies. He always reminded us that “ we have no MATERIAL wealth OR RICHES TO GIVE you therefore, make good on your studies because your education is the only inheritance we can leave BEHIND- never take it for granted because nobody can take it away from you” – this is a very common reminder from parents especially when you come from average families.. And true enough, I saw the wisdom of these words. All four of us truly placed great premium on our education. The hard work and dedication of our parents to give us good education was a legacy we always treasured and passed down to our children. Fr Ernesto Javier, former president of Xavier University gave Northern Mindanao a lasting legacy by establishing the Dr Jose P Rizal College of Medicine- borne out of his vision to have doctors available to care for the people of Northern Mindanao especially those from the marginalized sector of our society. Today, we have nurtured this legacy by maintaining a good tract record of being a top performing medical school and having our graduates serve not only the region and the entire country but yes, we have graduates too doing very admirable work as physicians in foreign lands. We generally think of legacy not only in terms of infra-structures, but also in the form of very tangible things like financial wealth, real estates ,jewelries ,or achievements and discoveries given when one usually has passed on or when ones career has come to an end. However , meaningful and enduring legacies can actually lie on the lives of the people you have touched: those whose sufferings you have alleviated ; those whom you gave hope and inspiration. Although you still have a long way to go before acknowledging that you have reached your goal to become the physician of your dreams, you are certainly blessed because this profession allows you this early , the opportunity to make a difference ON THE LIVES OF the people you meet on your journey.. I can think of no other example of a physician whose legacy is worth nurturing than Dr Jose P Rizal , our national hero , your fellow Atenean and whose name your school bears. He was a physician par excellence whose nationalism was beyond compare. He possessed the qualities which spell out what your Alma Mater espoused for its graduates to possess namely : Competence, Commitment, Conscience and Compassion. These are the qualities of an excellent physician and health care professional which you can nurture and pass on to those who come after you. Before you leave the gates of your Alma Mater, let me therefore revisit with you these qualities as our “Pabaon with the hope that in the future, wherever you are, , whatever you do as a professional, you shall be different because you are an ATENEAN DOCTOR. 1st COMPETENCE : In this age when technological advancements & innovations have given rise to more effective and efficient treatment modalities , the pressure to keep pace with the acquisition of these knowledge & skills has become very challenging for medical practitioners. Your teachers and your clinical consultants gave you the foundation and capability to be primary care physicians . The ball is now in your hands on how you can enhance , improve and become the best versions of yourselves. Medicine is one very dynamic discipline that the need to really be a life long learner is a MUST. What has been safe and useful before, may no longer be such today. Although technology has its merits and great advantages, do not lose yourselves on its glory and magnificence that you give up your capacity to be humane. To become competent is to humble yourself and be flexible enough in order that you become open to learning beyond your comfort zones. It requires you to have patience and persistence to keep on trying and doing your best in what you do and learning from your mistakes. Yet, one should never regard God given talents to be your sole possessions and let arrogance consume you. Do not be afraid that someone else will steal the thunder from you. Learn to teach , coach and mentor those who come after you. Teaching is the best proof of learning. Doctors are not immune to disease and one day, we could become patients ourselves ( the most difficult patients as they say) . What a relief it would be then to be confident of your attending physician knowing that you who taught him well. 2nd COMMITMENT: You must have seen or heard of physicians pushing themselves to exhaustion and even taking maximum risk of their lives INCLUDING their families ( these situations were clearly exemplified during the pandemic) ; or the doctors to the barrios who paid for their lives just to serve the people in remote areas or in those war-torn places. Have you ever asked yourself if in the future, your COMMITMENT to your profession can go this far? Commitment need not be this daunting. It can be as simple as honoring time : like coming to an appointment as expected . It could also mean pursuing with passion and dedication your goal of becoming an excellent physician through hard work and sacrifice. There are no BUTS when we talk about real commitment because if there are, you end up with mediocrity. And how exactly can we nurture this value? It can be done by simply being consistent on how we honor our promises, our obligations & our accountabilities ; . We need to walk the talk and only then shall we be able to show what it means to be committed to a goal or a promise. As physicians of character, the need to practice and show integrity in all aspects OF our lives is crucial for us to earn respect from everyone. It is human nature to want to be respected but never forgetting that respect is earned, not demanded , not inherited. 3rd CONSCIENCE :Your ability to decide and act based on THE BEST MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE & TECHNICAL COMPETENCE WITH DUE CONSIDERATION TO what is morally and ethically right . We therefore deal with our patients by putting their welfare above our own even to some extent that it entails discomfort or sacrifice on our part. Answering a call in the middle of the night or even when you are not feeling well; doing so even on bad weather ; going to medical missions to serve the least and forgotten population; honoring the decision of a patient which runs contrary to your plan; telling the patient the correct prognosis with or without the planned intervention; accepting accountability of an untoward event that happened because of ones mistake; advocating equitable care and use of limited resources without biases: all these are instances when our conscience are called into play. Simply put, to nurture conscience is to be able to ALWAYS put THE BEST INTEREST OF our patientS before our own and making sure our decisions are MORALLY & ETHICALLY SOUND. Sadly though, WE ARE SEEING A DEARTH OF CONSCIENCE o see among many of our leaders on whose hands depend the health and lives of our people. All we can do is hope and pray that eventually their conscience will be awakened and the consequences of their neglect rectified. 4th COMPASSION : Defined as the feeling of seeing someone else’s pain and having the desire or need to ease or alleviate that suffering. Isn’t this simply the very essence of what we physicians ought to be? I once witnessed a consultant berate a patient’s daughter who asked for a discount on his professional fee. He ended the conversation with “ If not for me, your mother would have been dead already!” I was dumbfounded and horrified to hear such words from such a senior and top specialist known to be brilliant and highly skilled. The encounter made me so ashamed that a colleague of such stature could be so heartless and brutal to a person in distress . Aside from secretly wishing karma for this colleague, I promised myself I will never go this path ever. Where is compassion when we hear or witness those horrible instances of bullying colleagues in the guise of power tripping ; testing the endurance of their underlings; or pure and simple desire to let others experience what they have been through. All these reasons are really unacceptable and proof of the absence of compassion in their souls. Compassion is rooted in LOVE. So how else can we truly and genuinely care for others if we do not have the capacity to love? It should therefore be inherent on us doctors to have the capacity to love humanity because our profession is first and foremost a CALLING to SERVE AND BE MEN AND WOMEN FOR OTHERS Dr Jose Rizal spent his days in exile in Dapitan before he was executed. In the short time he spent there, he was able to build a community by being such an excellent physician endowed with the 4 C’s with several other skills like farming, engineering, teaching and more . He did all these simply because he cared so much for the people . He was there to listen to their problems even beyond health concerns; he was there to cure, counsel and improve their lives . He made the people his partners and was present at all times for them. He was ahead of his time in assuring social accountability in the community where he was able to make changes in health systems by basically partnering with the people he served and effectively coming up with solutions that they all collaborated to make. You can be a catalyst of change in the future by just being the Atenean doctor that you are. I saw a reel days ago in which an experiment was made on a squirrel which was placed inside a box filled with real nuts. The squirrel was very relaxed, contented and secure with all the food available without doing any effort at all. After 3 days, he was given a gold coated fake nut which caught his curiosity , amazement and attention. Daily, more of such nuts were placed inside the box and the squirrel forgot all about the real nuts. It just continuously gazed and wondered at the shinning gold nuts that little by little he grew emaciated because he no longer ate the real nuts and finally he died. Moral of the story: in life, let us not be dazzled and be carried away by accolades, wealth, power and other worldly treasures while forgetting what truly matters and that is : our family; our relationships with people who give us love, inspiration , peace and genuine satisfaction. May you all go to places where you are needed most; enriched by the legacy of this institution namely : Competence , Commitment, Conscience and Compassion ; and may these four qualities enable you to face the challenges of your profession and be socially accountable of your actions so that we can give the future generation a brighter tomorrow. AMDG CONGRATULATIONS BATCH INSIGNIS!
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School of Med Commencement Speaker
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