CIM graduate tops doctors exams

THE roster of new doctors includes a Cebu City graduate who landed in the top 10.

Jon Karl Delgado Velasco from the Cebu Institute of Medicine finished second in the Physician Licensure Examination, whose results were released yesterday by the Professional Regulation Commission.

Exam results for new doctors were somewhat overshadowed by Wednesday’s release of the bar examination results, where the performance of law schools usually gets major media attention.

Velasco graduated in Cebu Institute of Medicine (CIM) last 2010. His spent his one year post-graduate internship at the Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital.

Velasco said he focused on his review for five months before taking the exam.

“I’d be happy if I just passed but it’s a blessing that I made it to the top,” he said in Cebuano.

Velasco said at first, he couldn’t believe when his friends told him about the result past 5 p.m. because the exam was difficult.

He gave credit to the support of friends and family who prayed for him, and to God’s guidance.

Of the 990 examinees, 520 passed the examination that conducted by the Board of Medicine in the cities of Manila and Cebu last February. Results were released three working days after.

The top placer with a score of 88.50 percent was Ronald Resuma Ceriales from Our Lady of Fatima University in Valenzuela City, Metro Manila.

Velasco, who came in second place, got a score of 85.92 percent.

The 27-year-old resident of Talamban, Cebu City is the second of six children and a US immigrant.

Hs father Mateo is a businessman while his mother Espelita is a housewife.

Velasco, a US immigrant, said his immediate plan is to take the US licensure examination for doctors because he wanted to work in the United States. He obtained a green card when he studied in Bonham High School in Texas, where he stayed with an aunt.

Velasco is the only doctor of the family. He went to Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu for grade school and later the Bongham High School in Texas. He had his pre-medicine course at the Velez College.

Dr. Joannes Alegado, a resident physician of Cebu Doctors University Hospital, said Velasco was his post graduate intern.

“He was a good intern – hardworking and he has initiative,” Alegado said. /Correspondent Jhunnex Napallacan