MikeLigalig.com

Written By Jhunnex Napallacan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Visayas Bureau

Many Filipino doctors want to go abroad and earn dollars but the only Cebuano in the top 10 of the 2007 Physician Licensure Examination will stay in Cebu, working in a government hospital.

Dr. Lily Mae Quevedo Dacay, 26, said she preferred working in a government hospital because she felt she would find great fulfillment in serving the poor.

Dacay who graduated from the Cebu Doctors' University in 2006, is the 8th placer in the Physician Licensure Examination, the results of which were announced Wednesday by the Professional Regulation Commission.

She said she would apply for her residency at the government-run Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) in Cebu City to specialize in either obstetrics-gynecology or internal medicine.

Of the 2,666 medical graduates who took the examination held in Manila, Cebu and Davao this month, 1,737 passed.

Dacay said she was surprised when she found out that she made it to the eighth place.

She learned that she passed the board exams at 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday and learned from friends two hours later that she made it to the top ten.

Dacay garnered a rating of 85.17 percent to tie with Lowe Lebosada Chiong of the University of the Philippines-Manila. The board topnotcher, Ma. Christina Cedilla Jovida, was a graduate of the Our Lady of Fatima University in Valenzuela City, Bulacan, who garnered a rating of 86.92 percent. Second placers, with a grade of 85.92 percent, were Ansarie Pedrosa Salpin of West Visayas State University in La Paz, Iloilo, and Sherilyn Alvaran Tuazon of University of Santo Tomas in Sampaloc, Manila. Diana Rivadelo Tamondong-Lachica, the third placer, is from University of the Philippines in Manila, with 85.75 percent.

She said the examination was difficult and she was lucky that she passed and made it to the top ten. She attributed her success to God.

Dacay, however, was consistently in the dean's list, said Susan Matura of the CDU registrar's office. She was the third top student of the class when she graduated in April 2006.

Dacay is the only daughter, and second of four children of couple Ernesto and Liliosa Dacay of Oppra, Barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City.

Her father owns the Dacay Security Agency while her mother works at the Cebu Central Post Office.

Dacay said she studied for the board exams in between shifts at the government-run VSMMC.

Dacay said her career in medicine was her mother's choice.

She said her mother "brainwashed" her into taking up medicine by telling her that being a doctor would provide her a stable job in a "noble profession" and provide her an opportunity to serve the people.

She said it was not until she was doing hospital internship that she began to love being a doctor.

The rest of the top 10 successful board examiners were Marjorie Co Golekoh, University of Santo Tomas (85.58): Aries Caesar Patdu Gavino, University of the Philippines-Manila ( 85.33); Jeffrey Palarca Mendoza, University of Santo Tomas (85.25); Ronald Alvin Villanueva, University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center (85.08); Carmel Gan Gonzales, University of the Philippines Manila (85) and Razel Carlos Siron-Gonzales, Angeles University Foundation (85).


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