News and Events
St. Luke's College of Medicine Aims to be the Top Medical School
ST. LUKE'S COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AIMS TO BE TOP MED SCHOOL
Medical Center Provides P50 Million for Scholars, P50 Million for Operations
And P100 Million in Research Grants to Faculty Members Annually
By Coylee Gamboa
St. Luke's College of Medicine is aiming to be the top medical school in the country in 10 years time, surpassing the UP College of Medicine and the University of Sto. Tomas Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.
SLCM, established in 1994, is just 14 years old. UP College of Medicine was established in 1906 and the UST Faculty of Medicine was set up in 1609. Can this Johnny-come-lately actually overtake the two acknowledged leaders in the field or is this just an educator's pipe dream?
Full Support from Medical Center
It's not a pipe dream," said Dr. Brigido L. Carandang, dean of SLCM. "We've been putting in place measures to take us there and we're backed 100% by St. Luke's Medical Center in this effort."
St. Luke's Medical Center is providing the school with P50 million a year for operating expenses, another P50 million for scholarships and P100 million in research grants to the faculty. "No other school in the country has that kind of financial backing from a private entity" said Dean Carandang.
In its quest to be the top medical school, SLMC is aiming to: educate the best minds, produce excellent physicians who are ready to specialize and develop a research culture.
Faculty Revamp
SLCM's efforts to attract the best students began with a revamp of its faculty in 1995. "We trimmed down our faculty from over 400 to less than 146, retaining only those who shared the vision of what we could become and who were willing to work for it," the dean said. "It was an unpopular move but a necessary one," he acknowledged.
"Today, our faculty-student ratio is 146:190. We can admit 300 students and still have a 1:2 ratio. Our students have the rare opportunity to learn in close consultation with our faculty members who are outstanding clinicians in their fields.
"We made it attractive for them to teach by raising the salaries of our teachers sevenfold. In terms of salaries, we are now on par with the highest-paid teachers -- the University of Sto. Tomas Faculty of Medicine. But look at their workload at UST -- they have classes of 100 students. We have fewer students in a class."
Integrated Curriculum
SLCM's curriculum combines a strong basic foundation in the medical sciences with extensive clinical training in patient care. The basic and the clinical sciences have been integrated throughout the years of medical school," said Associate Dean Marcie Atienza, MD. "The courses are streamlined in terms of content and their sequence is optimized."
In the first year, for instance, the three major basic science courses -- Anatomy and Histology, Biochemistry, and Physiology -- are offered, together with Preventive and Community Medicine I. Integration of the basic and the clinical sciences is featured in Foundations of Medicine. This course emphasizes the essential building blocks for understanding medical science and their relevance in patient care. And Psychiatry is introduced as a module of seven sessions to help the students cope with being in medical school.
Tighter Admission Requirements
Its third step was to tighten admission requirements. When enrollments were declining and many medical schools were dispensing with National Medical Admission Test cut-off levels in order to admit more students, St. Luke's went against the tide and raised its NMAT requirement from 65% to 90%.
"We've limited ourselves to the top 10% of the market, the same group of students that would go to the UP College of Medicine," Dean Carandang said. "We want the privilege of educating the best mind."
Scholarships
To entice the best and the brightest students from the top schools in the Philippines, SLCM offers generous scholarships. Students who graduate with latin honors from Philippine colleges and score 90% or higher in the NMAT can obtain full scholarships. "Covering tuition, laboratory and miscellaneous fees and books, the scholarship is worth about P90,000 per semester. A full scholarship makes the cost of attending SLCM about the same as going to UP, which is subsidized by the government," Dean Carandang said.
SLCM also offers partial scholarships to bachelor degree holders with a general weighted average of 2.0 and an NMAT score of 90%. A partial scholarship covers 75% of tuition, laboratory and miscellaneous fees and books
But there's more. Students who pass each level can maintain or obtain a full scholarship with a GWA of 85% or higher, as long as they have no grade below 80. They can maintain or obtain a partial scholarship with a GWA of 85% or higher and no failing grade, or by having no grade below 80.
"We have P50 million a year for scholarships. This year, we dispensed only about a third of that, so we still have more than P30 million worth of scholarships to give away," Dr. Carandang said.
Ready to Specialize
"There is a call for schools to focus on community medicine and train doctors who will serve in the countryside," the dean acknowledged, "but that's not our agenda."
The government's other objective (in what pundits describe as its somewhat schizoid objectives for medical education in the Philippines - to produce doctors who will serve in rural areas by teaching community-based medicine and to produce doctors who will staff hospitals that will make the Philippines a major destination for medical tourism) is what SLCM is responding to.
"Our goal is to produce excellent and competent physicians who are ready to specialize and who can staff world-class facilities like St. Luke's Medical Center. That's why, in our curriculum, we have integrated clinical subjects as early as the second year," Dean Carandang said.
Training for Research
The dean continued, "The good schools in the Philippines provide excellent medical education to train its graduates to be clinicians. The difference lies in which medical schools prepare their graduates for doing research work. In the college, we are laying the foundation for developing the scientists who will do the research work for the college and the medical center."
When Dr. Carandang became dean in 2005, he noted that the school had no links with St. Luke's Medical Center's Research and Biotechnology Division (RBD). He recalled, "I enlisted the scientists there and made them faculty members for our 2nd year students." I told them, "I'm giving some of you appointments in the College of Medicine and I asked the others to give lectures."
This had the effect of not only increasing the number of PhDs per capita among the faculty but also raising the bar for students who had to answer to the more stringent demand of teachers with PhDs. "they are stricter, more demanding." Said the dean, "but that's how we will excel.
More importantly, as early as their second year, the students were exposed to a culture of research. Dean Carandang explained the importance of research culture, saying "Research contributes to the pool knowledge. The top medical schools in the world are known for the research they do. We have facilities and the technical expertise to help Filipino scientists achieve breakthroughs. Graduates and undergrads from schools like UP come to the RBD to do their research.
He added that, just this school year, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), approved a masteral program in Molecular Medicine. "The goal of this course is to develop the doctors, the researchers for Molecular Medicine and its applications in the Philippines."
Research and Biotechnology Division
At the RBD, "disease phenomena are studied at the clinical level, in animal models, in in vitro systems, and at the cell and molecular levels," said Dr. Filipinas F. Natividad, assistant vice president and director for Research and Biotechnology of St. Luke's Medical Center. "This multifaceted approach leads to more productive and effective research which bridges the gap between the laboratory bench and the clinic."
Dean Carandang added, "St. Luke's Medical Center has surpassed what the established schools have done in research work in recent years."
Currently, the RBD's major research thrusts have led to the establishment of centers geared specifically for certain studies. Dr. Natividad said they include the following:
• St. Luke's National Human Genome Center, which studies the genetics of cardiovascular diseases, different cancers, diabetes, neurological disorders and microbial infections. These include disease gene markers, genetic profiling of SNP's and expression profiling using microarray technology and proteomics.
• St. Luke's Center for Stem Cell Research, which is developing stem cell-based approaches for application in ocular diseases, blood disorders, metabolic disorders, liver diseases, cardiovascular diseases and neurodegenerative diseases.
• Information Systems and Databanks for different diseases, which serve as important resources of patient data for research and improvement of quality health care. These projects archive, provide data access and facilitate statistical analysis. They also provide the important data for the active pursuit of bioinformatics for various diseases. To date, RBD's information resources include the following:
Dengue Data Bank
Stroke Data Bank
Colon Cancer Data Bank
Leukemia Data Bank
Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Data Bank
Cardiovascular Disease Information System
Liver Diseases Data Bank
Cataract Data Bank
Lung Cancer Databank
Nephrology Databank
Bangungot Databank
Breast Diseases Databank
Endoscopy Databank
Mood Disorders Databank
Sleep Disorders Databank
Intensive Care Information System
• Center for Clinical Trials, which is responsible for the comprehensive implementing of clinical trials according to global standards of excellence in Good Clinical Practice. It is the only one-stop-shop in the Philippines that offers efficient services in the review, implementation and conduct of clinical trials.
• Center for Drug Discovery and Development, where scientists are working on some natural products with anti-viral properties.
• Medical Biotechnology Program: Dengue Research, which is doing groundbreaking work on dengue. RBD's dengue research database contains data from 1995 to the present. Having isolated almost 300 dengue strains of different serotypes, RBD is working on the molecular and cell biology of the dengue virus. Potential vaccine candidates are being studied.
Future Effect
Dean Carandang said, "It may take 10 to 12 years for the impact of what we are doing to be felt, but the board of directors of both the Medical Center and the College of Medicine looked far ahead of the current situation. The changes we have implemented at the college and the achievements of the medical center are necessary if the Philippines is to compete as a medical hub in this part of the world and if we are to keep our physicians in this country."
He continued, "As the Philippines's reputation as one of the best medical centers in the region is enhanced by our country's achievements in research, our best doctors will be enticed to stay. Medical tourism will boom as foreign patients come here looking for a cure and more of our physicians will have thriving practices. With a growing economy, even the practices of doctors in the provinces should flourish."
Coylee Gamboa who has a Master's in Communication from Stanford University, was financial markets editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, and a news editor of the Business Times in Singapore. Living in Manila today, Coylee, a former professorial lecturer in Journalism at the University of the Philippines and the Asian Institute of Journalism, is a freelance contributor, an editor and a book writer, assisting people with their life's work, memoirs and autobiographies.
