the perils of

As fate would have it, I am once again transferring.  The neighboring town of Nasipit is in need of a replacement Municipal Health Officer after their previous one graduated from the Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) program. The Department of Health Central Office also (unofficially) declared this year that there should be no more Doctors to the Barrios assigned to highly urbanized cities. Butuan City currently has two. To solve these two problems, the DOH thought that the most practical solution would be to transfer one DTTB from Butuan to Nasipit. And that one DTTB would be me. Easy peasy. Except it's been hard. Not just on me, but on my staff members - my nurses, midwives, medtech - who now have to manage patients on their own. Our health system is structured in such a way that patients who can't afford a private physician end up seeking consult at a barangay health center, where they are seen by a nurse or a midwife. Those nurses and midwives take a quick clinical history and