LEARNING INSIGHTS:

Community Health Management gave me the opportunity to develop a

critical understanding of the leadership, planning, implementation, evaluation and
mediation of community health. Through the ideas and knowledge acquired in this
course, I was able to appreciate the roles of midwives in the community setting. The
assumption that midwives responsibilities are only limited in hospital setting
remains untrue. Through this course, I was able to recognize the importance of
midwives in the community.
Within my exposure in the City Health Office of Batac, I became more
systematic and strategic in handling my job. I had the chance to attend to different
kinds of patients, not only pregnant women but also sick children. I learned the
importance of assessing my patients through monitoring their vital signs to include
their height and weight and even fetal heart tones, interviewing their health history
to include pregnancy and delivery history, asking their chief complaints and
prioritizing whom to attend first. I had also the chance to give health teachings to
pregnant women regarding prenatal care that include proper nutrition and
exercises, vaccinations and even discussing to them their delivery plans and the
danger signs of pregnancy. I also experienced administering vaccines to children
during

the

Immunization

Day.

had

also

emphasized

the

importance

of

breastfeeding, proper feeding and demonstrated how to bath their babies.

Working together with Public Health Nurses, City Health Physician and other
members of the community health team is such a privilege. Every member of the
team has specific responsibilities and functions needed to achieve a healthy
community. My exposure have opened my realizations that we can also perform
other equally important responsibilities aside from assisting pregnant women during

labor and delivery. We can do a lot more, more than of what expected of us. The
community health team is never complete without the expertise of midwives. We
can also be advocate of the community people, we can refer patient from the
community to the Nurses and Doctor who needs immediate attention and
management, we can think of programs beneficial to the community people where
we are assigned of during meetings, we can propose ideas how to change their
wrong beliefs and practices during planning, we can evaluate how far have we gone
and think of better plans on addressing such problems.
Working with the community health team requires teamwork, proper
communication, coordination and cooperation in order for the programs to be
implemented successfully. After all, community health team measure their success
on how well the community people responded. Health promotion is a vital aspect in
the community health management. There are different factors affecting the
delivery of health care in the community such as their differences in beliefs and
practices, traditions, culture and even religion and economic status play a great
role.
We play a great role in making the community unite as one. As midwives and
as member of the community health team, we are geared towards community
health management. We all aim for community participation leading to community
development. Proper management is the key!
With this course, I realized how blessed I am to be a midwife, to be a member
of the community health team and to be an advocate to the community people.