Medical Students

I teach Physiology in the first year Medical course at Lyceum Northwestern University, here in Dagupan City, Pangasinan, Philippines. For this school year classes started just recently and my first meeting with the students is in the laboratory. That is the physiology lab in the picture with the students working on their first experiment. For this school year we only have 13 students, 4 of which are Thailanders and the rest Filipinos.

Gone were the days when screening of students who were entering the Medical course were very stiff. There were so many aspiring to become doctors then and competition is really tough. Nowadays, students entering Medicine are very few. In fact some Medical Schools here in the Philippines have already closed down because of their dwindling number. The reason probably is the difficult times, together with the never ending increase in the price of gasoline. Another reason maybe is that the practice of this profession here in the Philippines is not so profitable so that most doctors opted to become nurses and go in other countries like US and UK.