Active Ageing Centre (AAC)
Active Ageing Centre (AAC)
I was assigned to AAC aka Link for about 2 weeks from 22 Nov to 2 Dec.
The AAC aka Link welcomes the elderly who are mobile, which means that they are able to do things independently such as going to the toilet or eating. There are many different activities available for the elderly who come to AAC daily or whenever they feel like it. From Monday - Thursday the elderly can participate in exercises held at 3 different blocks. The exercises at Blk 5A are mostly for the elderly who are able to stand as the exercises are much more intense whereas the exercises at Blk 10 and Blk 11 are for the elderly who are not mobile and are mostly wheelchair bound, hence the exercises are mostly chair exercises.
While waiting for lunch which is provided by Link, the elderly can do different activities some examples include, memory games, reading the newspaper or even doing some math sums. About 15 minutes before lunch, the staff will engage the elderly in simple exercises. When its lunchtime, the staff will serve the elderly food according to their diets. After that the elderly will leave and come back again at 2pm for another round of activities. The activities vary everyday, the elderly will play Bingo on Monday and Friday, English Lessons on Tuesday, Arts and Craft on Wednesday and their favourite is the Thursday activity which is Rummy-O, a game that is similar to that of Mahjong but involves numbers instead.
Link also has a 'test' known as the cognitive stimulation test (CST) which is for the elderly which are at higher risk of dementia. They carry out different activities for each session that helps to stimulate their brains.
General Reflections
On the first day, we were given a briefing by Mr Yong the IC at Link. At first, I was really scared because our main duty there was to engage the elderly in conversations.
The first elderly I talked to was a lady who was in her 80s, she shared many things with me although I didn't ask her about her family, she told me things about her daughter and how she took care of both her mother and her mother-in-law.
After the first conversation, it was lunch so we helped as I was serving lunch I realised that different elderly had different diets for example some only ate white rice or some were vegetarian. I was really amazed by how the staff was able to remember the diets of all the elderly that were there for lunch.
As the elderly was eating, Mr Yong directed us to an Uncle who later introduced himself as Uncle Michael and told us to engage him in a conversation. Uncle Michael was really friendly and shared many things with us, one of which is that he used to play the keyboard and that he enjoys listening to classical music.
I found this experience to converse with the elderly to be very fun because normally we are not given the opportunity to communicate with the elderly aside from our grandparents. Although there is a significant age gap, we can learn a lot of things from the elderly like life lessons and advice.
The most difficult part about conversing with them is that some of them speak dialect. Although I speak Cantonese and understand a little bit of Teochew, the majority of elderly at Link spoke hokkien so there were some instances that I did not understand what they were saying.
We were also asked to do safe entry for a short period of time, it seemed simple at the start. We just had to scan the elderly's card and record the time they came in. But, this was where I was wrong. Recording who came in was easy but recording who went out was difficult. Everyday there was about 20-30 elderly coming in and out of the AAC and I didn't recognise all of them. So, when they left we had to ask for their names again. This was something that the staff didn't have to do because they recognised all of them.
I was really shocked by this because I could barely remember the names of the elderly I talked to, yet they could remember every single one of them who walked in.
Rummy-O
Rummy-O is an activity that the elderly enjoy playing at Link. This activity takes place every Thursday. This was the first time I ever played this game and I feel like this is an experience I must share.
Rummy-O is a game that is similar to that of Mahjong except it involves numbers instead of patterns.
The game goes like this, everyone will shuffle the cards and stack them up in 7s. Next, everyone will choose one card and flip it open, the person with the largest number will go first by taking 2 stacks of 7. For you to start the game, the cards you place down must add up to 30. The aim of this game is to clear all the cards on your hands.
This game was really difficult at first because you had to think of ways to get rid of the cards you had. You had to break up some of the groups and regroup them such that you can add your own cards in. The elderly were really good at this game, they were able to see sequences that I couldn't see. They were also really fast, I later learnt from Mr Yong that the elderly at Link had participated in a Rummy-O competition before!
I really enjoyed playing this game and I felt that this game is really good for the elderly because it gets them thinking about how they should place their cards and it is also a good way to engage them.
Christmas Party
The Christmas party took place on 2 December, so while we were at the AAC we helped out with the logistics required for the party. The experience was really fulfilling because I was never involved in such a large-scale party before. The day before the party the AAC closed early at about 1pm and all the staff, including us were given a briefing.
At first, I didn't understand what Mrs Quek, the main in charge of the party, said during the briefing "everything looks nice on paper but in reality it's not". But, on the day itself I understood, everything was really chaotic because the event was held at 2 different venues Blk 10 and Blk 11 due to the lack of space. We were assigned to the reception area and were in charge of registering the elderly.
This was something that I thought was going to be simple but it wasn't. Everything was going smoothly at first until the bus transporting the elderly who stayed at Old Airport Rd came, there was a huge surge of elderly and some of them were really anxious and wanted to get their tags right away. We were really overwhelmed but got over it.
This experience was really enjoyable because I got to experience being part of the 'planning' team for the first time and I got to experience first hand what goes on before a party.
Home Personal Care & Medical Escort Transportation (HPC & MET)
St Hilda's offers a service that I think is really unique, home visits. Home visits is where the nurse visits the home of the elderly to check their health. I had the opportunity to shadow Nurse Janet to the house of one of the elderly. The lady suffers from partial blindness and her husband has Parkison's disease.
It was there that I learnt what a patient with Parkison's disease suffers with, they have freeze episodes whereby they are unable to move for a period of time and they take quite some time to respond. The lady's husband was unable to get out of his bed on his own so one of the nurses had to help him.
The lady herself was also sick, she suffers from partial blindness which meant that she could not really see from one of her eyes. But I was surprised to know that she was still able to cut up chives and onions on her own. Although it may have been difficult she still managed to do it.
Another thing we did was to bring the elderly to the clinic nearby for their vaccines. We carried out this duty for about 5 days taking elderly from both link and the DC for their vaccines. The experience was really enriching because we had to be extra careful with how we were pushing the elderly on the wheelchair and how we were supporting them. Although I slowly got used to it, I was still scared that I may accidentally injure them especially when I was assisting the elderly who were more frail.
Medical Consult Sit in & Multidisciplinary meeting
We were given the opportunity to sit in for a medical consult. On a monthly basis, a doctor will come to the centre on Wednesday and attend to consults while there will be 2 other doctors from TTSH that will attend to their consults on Saturday mornings. There is also a zoom meeting monthly with the doctors to address any patient cases that the centre wants to bring up.
During the meeting, a total of 7 cases was addressed. Out of the 7 cases that were brought up, 2 cases stood out to me.
One of which is that of a male who is 90 years old. What stood out to me the most was the fact that his blood pressure is higher in the Day Care than at home. I was really surprised by this because I have never heard of someone who has blood pressure that varies according to where he is. Later on, the doctor hypothesized that the drop in blood pressure at home may be because he's doing nothing at home so when he comes to the Day Care where activites are carried out his blood pressure will rise.
Another one of the cases is that of a female who is 86 years old. I learnt something new from listening to her case and that is Sleep wake reversal. This is where the patient is awake most of the time during the night and will fall asleep during the daytime. After the consult, we asked Nurse Nizam (the nurse who was with us during the zoom session) what sleep wake reversal was about and he shared with us that it may be a sign of dementia.
This experience really taught me something new about the conditions of different patients and how the centre has to work to try and help all of them.
The other meeting we sat in was something called the 'Multidisciplinary Meeting'. This is a meeting that concerns the behavior of the elderly who are clients of St Hilda's, this meeting takes place without the doctors. One of the cases was that of a male who hits the staff because he wants to go home and this made me realise that not all the elderly at St Hilda's may be friendly, some may be unfriendly due to various reasons, whether it may be because they are suffering from whatever diseases or because they simply do not want to be disturbed. From this meeting I also understood that the different departments have to work together to think of ways to help these elderly, from both the medical view and the social view.