Excess hormone production from adrenal tumors caused by primary hyperaldosteronism or pheochromocytoma are common etiologies for secondary hypertension. Studies have shown that sustained long-term circulating hormones in excess affect the blood vessels and cardiac structures. Inflammation of cardiomyocytes leads to fibrosis and eventual cardiomyopathy and is clinically presented as arrhythmia, nonfatal myocardial infarction, heart failure, or even death. The tissue changes and/or impaired cardiac function are reversible if early diagnosis and removal of the adrenal tumor by unilateral adrenalectomy is done. However, the condition becomes challenging if the adrenal lesions are bilateral. This article introduces the concept of systemic hormonal unloading and will discuss the philosophy of quality of life in managing bilateral adrenal disease.
Hyperaldosteronism ; Pheochromocytoma ; Quality of Life

The impact of soil-transmitted helminthiases on the overall health of an individual may lead to significant morbidity related to the number of worms harbored by the person. Light intensity infections usually present no significant effect on the individual except in times of more massive infections, in which complications may lead to impaired growth and physical development. With this, international and local health programs aim to increase the proportion of community households aware of proper helminthiases prevention and control strategies. Access to potable water, and drainage and disposal or reuse of household water, to safe and sanitary facilities, safe human excreta disposal, and proper management of solid waste appropriate information on prevention and treatment of soil-transmitted helminthiases (STH), and dissemination of key messages to promote safe water storage, hand washing, bathing practices, safe food handling, latrine use and wearing of shoes and regular deworming practices are recommended points of intervention to reduce the prevalence of helminthiases in children and other high-risk population groups. Guided with the principles of health promotion and education and the health program framework of the Department of Health (DOH) and World Health Organization (WHO), community health may be achieved equitably by leveraging accurate information, community mobilization, and sustainable health partnerships.
Health Promotion ; Health Education ; Communicable Diseases ; Public Health

Although evidence-based teaching has been adopted in various learning disciplines, its adoption in medical education remains challenging. To graduate a full-fledged well-rounded physician equipped to face the real-world challenges of diagnosis and treating diseases is the ultimate goal of every medical institution. Medical students’ clinical competence is anchored on the approach of facilitators’ acquired teaching expertise and how they apply learned techniques to connect basic knowledge to clinical skill enhancement. Are these approaches within the realm of evidence-based teaching? The subsequent discussion will elaborate on proven effective strategies [Problem-Based Learning (PBL), Outcome-Based Education (OBE)] and how a strategic teaching and learning tool [Target-Oriented Clinical Skill Enhancement (TOCSE)] has proven to address the issue.
Education, Medical ;

In 2021, 537 million adults were living with diabetes. Being a progressive disease, there would eventually be failure of oral hypoglycemic agents (OHA) to maintain good glycemic control and a majority will require insulin. However, optimal glycemic control has not been satisfactory in a significant proportion of patients who were on insulin therapy. Patient factors (eg, awareness, compliance, socioeconomic) have been identified but physician-related factors are as important. These include incorrect choice and inappropriate combination of insulin therapy which could be corrected by making the treatment physiologic. The purpose of this article is to improve management decisions in type 2 diabetes by reviewing its pathophysiology and identifying the optimum insulin regimen that could mimic such. Since eventual beta cell failure is central to its pathophysiology, it is but reasonable to replace insulin by mimicking its physiologic secretion. Hence, the term Insulin Replacement Therapy (IRT) should be utilized. This could be provided by the combination of premix insulin (ie, NPH + regular insulin) and rapid-acting insulin which has been reported to provide an initial 17.5% HbA1c reduction and even 18% reduction on 5-year follow-up providing sustainable control. A stepwise approach is an effective tool for insulin intensification. Hypoglycemia in insulin therapy could be prevented with an appropriate dietary regimen through automatic snacking.

Objective: The project aims to develop a community kitchen manual for public health emergencies.

Participants: The officers and members of the Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Kababaihan ng BASECO served as community respondents for this project. These eight women were in charge of the community kitchen operations, particularly the feeding program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Implementation: The whole project comes in three phases. The design stage was executed in phase one of this project. The phase one also focused on the development of manual content based on available literatures and considered the interviews conducted with respondents.

Discussion: The manual contains guidelines on food safety and meal preparations. Based on the interview, the proponents identified specific contents that must be included in the guidelines, as compared with the need to improve current operations of the group's community kitchen. Looking at the activities of the community, the proponents indicated the food flow guidelines to ensure a safe, nourishing and accessible community kitchen (S.N.A.C.K).

Conclusion: The designed community kitchen manual may be of use to lay groups putting up community kitchens, since there is no existing manual in the Philippines. However, phases two and three must be conducted to validate its usefulness and accuracy in the field.

Research integrity is manifested thru the use of honest and verifiable research methods with adherence to accepted professional codes. Recently, trustworthiness in research has been challenged by various forms of research misconduct, such as analytical flexibility, data dredging, HARKing (hypothesis after research knowledge), plagiarism, and selective and distorted reporting. Drivers of research misconduct have been identified as institutional--publication incentives to pursue a career, researcher--metric of success is publication volume, and the journal-- more likely to accept papers with positive. The open-access mode propelling the proliferation of predatory journals is causing a dilemma to sound research reporting. Measures were established to curtail research integrity challenges, such as study registration, open data, common reporting standards, a team of rivals, and blind analysis. This report will elaborate and provide insight into what influenced research misconduct, how it can be mitigated, and how to maintain a credible research environment.
Scientific Misconduct ; Predatory Journals As Topic

Background and Objective: Teaching clinical skills to undergraduate medical students has brought significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patient discussion utilized hypothetical cases from history taking to diagnosis and management. Further, everything was delivered online. Target-Oriented Clinical Skill Enhancement (TOCSE) is a teaching and learning tool that integrates the basic medical sciences, such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, microbiology, and pharmacology, at the clinical level. TOCSE has been proven to improve the clinical performance of fourth-year medical students. However, clinical confidence remains an issue, especially for medical students on pure online mode of learning during the pandemic. Therefore, this study was undertaken to determine if TOCSE also facilitates the development of confidence in the clinical performance of 4th-year medical students during the first-time patient encounter after online undergraduate classes. Methods: Eight-item Clinical Performance Confidence Scale survey was performed at three (3) time points of fourth-year medical student’s rotation in the Department of Medicine: (1) prior to the deployment to the outpatient department (Pre-OPD), (2) after the first-time patient encounter without TOCSE workshop (Post-OPD no TOCSE), and (3) after the patient encounter with TOCSE workshop (Post-OPD with TOCSE). Mean and standard deviations were used to summarize the confidence level of the 4th-year medical students, based on the 10-point differential scale being 0 as not confident at all and 10 as very confident. Wilcoxon Signed Rank assessed improvements of confidence level from Pre-OPD to Post-OPD. Effect sizes were also calculated to compare the improvement in the items. All statistical tests were performed in SPSS version 26.0. P-values less than 0.05 indicate a significant increase in the confidence level of 4th-year medical students. Results: There is a significant increase in the clinical confidence of 4th-year medical students from Pre-OPD to Post-OPD no TOCSE (mean ± SD: 6.32 ± 1.02 to 7.06 ± 0.95, p<0.001). Comparing the eight items between Pre-OPD and Post-OPD with no TOCSE, performing a complete physical examination has the most remarkable improvement. Further, there is a significant increase in the clinical confidence of 4th-year medical students from Post-OPD no TOCSE to Post-OPD with TOCSE (mean ± SD: 7.06 ± 0.95 to 7.51 ± 0.89, p<0.001). The performance of a complete history-taking has the most considerable improvement (7.29 + 1.03 to 7.89 + 1.01, p<0.001). Correspondingly, the most significant increase in the clinical confidence of 4th-year medical students was seen among the Post-OPD with TOCSE compared to their Pre- OPD confidence scores (mean ± SD: 6.32 ± 1.02 to 7.51 ± 0.89, p<0.001). Among the eight items between Pre-OPD and Post-OPD with TOCSE confidence scores, the item on performing a complete physical examination has the most remarkable improvement (5.67 ± 1.37 to 7.20 ± 1.22, p<0.001), closely followed by performing a complete history-taking (6.53 ± 1.19 to 7.89 ± 1.01, p<0.001). The most significant improvements in clinical confidence were seen in all the items in the Post-OPD with TOCSE than in the Post-OPD with no TOCSE versus Pre-OPD confidence scores. In addition, with TOCSE, the number of medical students who scored 7.50 and above was amplified more than 3 times (17.4% to 58.7%, p<0.001, Pre-OPD vs. Post-OPD with TOCSE, respectively). Conclusion: Target-Oriented Clinical Skill Enhancement (TOCSE) effectively builds up confidence during first-time patient encounters among fourth-year medical students taught online with hypothetical cases during their undergraduate classes. Key words: Target-Oriented Clinical Skill Enhancement, clinical confidence, clinical skill, fourth-year medical students, medical undergraduate challenge, online teaching in COVID-19 pandemic
Clinical Competence

Geriatrics is a branch of medicine concerned with diagnosing, treating, and preventing diseases in older people and problems specific to aging. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that the number of people aged 65 or older is projected to grow from an estimated 524 million in 2010 to nearly 1.5 billion in 2050. The burden of diseases in the aging population will dramatically impact healthcare expenses in low- and middle-income countries and even developed ones. A preventive approach is essential. The role of medical institutions and inclusion of geriatrics in the medical curriculum have become important. However, incorporating geriatrics into the medical curriculum is associated with various issues and challenges: compact preexisting curriculum, attitudes of teachers and students, and shortage of teaching geriatricians. An individualized institutional approach to curricular integration guided by the American Geriatrics Society’s minimum required competencies for the undergraduate will circumvent these challenges.
CURRICULUM ; EDUCATION

International collaborative Master in Public Health programs provide students wider opportunities to engage in vital public health related work with specific populations and communities to improve health through awareness, education, policy, and research. A transnational education model to promote academic exchange in public health is hereby showcased with the collaboration of the University of Santo Tomas, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and the University of Leeds, Nuffield Center for International Health and Development. The program was established through initial institutional visits of each respective staff, faculty capacity building through workshops and symposia, and final agreement on a laddered structure of curriculum. This article describes how this program was established.

Purpose: To connect didactic learning to clinical application is a challenging task both for the teachers and students. Target-Oriented Clinical Skill Enhancement (TOCSE) is a teaching and learning tool that integrates basic medical sciences at the clinical level. The authors sought to determine if TOCSE is effective in bridging didactic knowledge to clinical skill and enhancing the clinical performance of fourth year medical students.

Method: Between March 2021 and June 2021, in an online platform, the authors randomly allocated 141 fourth year medical students into the experimental (n=12 groups; n=63) and control groups (n=12 groups; n=78). Participants in the experimental group underwent the TOCSE module workshop while the control group utilized the standard method of teaching. The actively teaching faculty staff blinded of group allocation were invited to assess case presentations using a standardized rubric. A survey was done by the students (experimental and control) to evaluate how they perceived TOCSE to their performance and learning. Independent parametric t-test was performed to compare the clinical skill scores between the two groups.

Results: The experimental group had a mean clinical skill score of 35.29 (SD=2.64, excellent) while the control group had a mean clinical skill score of 31.96 (SD=4.04, satisfactory). The between-group comparisons using independent t-test indicated that the mean difference of -3.33 clinical skills scores between the experimental and control groups was statistically significant (t=-2.39, p=0.026, 95% CI=-6.22 to -0.45). Moreover, the perceived usefulness score (scale 10 as highest) among the TOCSE presenters (experimental groups) was 8.43 (SD=0.84) and scores among the TOCSE audience (control groups) was comparable at 8.36 (SD=0.71), both of which were interpreted as very helpful.

Conclusion: TOCSE is effective in bridging didactic knowledge to clinical skill and enhancing clinical performance of fourth year medical students.