Dr. Jacqueline Jabonero-Espina or Doc Jacqui or Mama Doc as her patients fondly refer to her is a Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrician. Dev Ped was a little known subspecialty of Pediatrics when Doc Jacqui started her practice in 2000 but this has changed over the last fifteen years as more and more patients around the Visayas and Mindanao area come to Cebu to seek her advice and help.

Doc Jacqui graduated in 1987 from the prestigious Cebu Institute of Medicine and took a year of postgraduate internship at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center before passing the Philippine Licensure Examinations in 1988. She finished Pediatric Residency at the Chong Hua Hospital and eventually took the Specialty Boards of the Philippine Pediatric Society in 1996 and eventually becoming Fellow in 2002 with her thesis on Breast Feeding. She practiced General Pediatrics before deciding on the subspecialty she fell in love with in 1998 at the University of the Philippines, Philippine General Hospital Manila.

Professional Practice

Doc Jacqui has served in several professional organizations. First as director of the Cebu Medical Society and Philippine Pediatric Society Central Visayas Chapter and finally capping this with the presidency of that esteemed Chapter from 2011 to 2013. Doc Jacqui is at home educating not only the parents of her patients but also her students and pears who look up to her with regards the diagnosis and therapy of the “differently abled” children.

Family Life

Mama Doc loves to shift roles but is at home best with being mother to a doctor (Khrystal Felicity Espina Bautista, anesthesiologist and married to Dr. Benjo Deasis Bautista a Surgeon with practice in Dumaguete), and three architects; Architect Mischa Maxime, also now happily married to practicing nurse, Christine Mae, Architect Aldo Jacques currently taking his masters in Interior Design at the Parsons in New York, and Tristan Joao who is about to take the Board Exams in Architecture.

Both Doc Shawn and Jacqui have three grandchildren and raring to see more

Pandemic Times

Doc Jacqui has continued her practice during pandemic times although she has done these through online consultations and meetings with her patients through Zoom. The lockdowns have caused a lot more stress on patients and well as parents, being couped-up in one place provides an avenue for more behavioral concerns. Thankfully, technology has kept up with the times and it is now possible to meet through Zoom or Facebook Messenger, this has also made it possible for Doc Jacqui to see patients from afar without having them to travel with the added advantage of seeing patients in their native environment.