Background information on CGH :

On 15 February 1997, the Old Changi Hospital merged with Toa Payoh Hospital to form New Changi Hospital and began to move into the present premises.

On 28 March 1998, the hospital was declared officially opened by then Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Under Singapore’s public healthcare restructuring, the hospital became part of the SingHealth cluster in 2000. Over the years, the hospital expanded its clinical services to include more services to better care for its patients and to meet the healthcare needs of the population.

On 11 April 2005, Changi General Hospital became the first acute care hospital to integrate care with a community hospital, St. Andrew’s Community Hospital,which are linked via a sheltered bridge.

On 11 June 2005, the hospital was the second hospital in Singapore to receive the Joint Commision International accreditation. It was the first hospital to have a JCI accreditation for its Heart Failure Programme and Acute Myocardinal IInfraction programme

On November 2010,the hospital acquired Singapore Sports Medicine centre to build on its expertise in sports medicine and create capacity for more sports specialists

On 1 April 2011, the hospital became legally independent of Singhealth

On November 2011, the hospital became a founding member of the Eastern Health Alliance.The Eastern Health Alliance was officially launched on 18 November 2011 by founding members Changi General Hospital, St. Andrew's Community Hospital, SingHealth Polyclinics and The Salvation Army Peacehaven Nursing HomeIts stated intention was to more closely coordinate the provision of healthcare services in the East.

In 2017, the Eastern Health Alliance merged with SingHealth and the hospital returned to the governance of SingHealth.

Background information of the projects/tasks I was involved in:

Our group was tasked to create 6 inpatient experience videos to enhance the patients’ experience in Changi General Hospital. Our first video was to illustrate the Accident and Emergency (A&E) journey for all different types of patients. This project aims to answer the main queries of the A&E journey and to enable patients to know more about their experience in A&E. As I was only given the content for this project, I planned out scene by scene on a piece of paper to help us better create the video by having a plan and allow us to finish the task more efficiently and also have a better, higher quality end product.

I hence used the website animator software Powtoons to enable us to create high quality animations as I do not really have much experience in this field, this beginner friendly website alloId us to create high quality animations. As such I executed our planned out scenes and finished the task relatively fast

With our A&E video done, I was tasked to do the next 4 videos related to breast cancer myths. The 4 videos was about different topics of breast cancer myths (mammograms, diets, symptoms and treatment) These videos was to help tackle the myths about breast cancer and clear the public misconceptions on such myths. With a better grasp on the Powtoons animation software, I was more confident in making these videos. However, I still needed to plan what I wanted to put in each slide and needed to familiarise ourselves with the content thus slowing down our process by a bit . HoIver, as the 4 videos use the same format (informative), after I finished the first video, I just used the same format and changed the texts and animations to suit the different topics while still using the standard informative formats, making the last 3 videos easier.

After finishing the 5 videos, Our last video was mainly about financial counselling and partially regarding the patient’s stay in the hospital. Again as with the previous videos, I planned out the scenes that I wanted to put in each scene with the information provided, planning out the animations and planning out the texts I want to put in. After the planning, I executed our plan and with the experience of the previous 5 videos, I quickly finished up the video

After all the videos, I was tasked to do other miscellaneous tasks around the office.

For instance I was tasked to correct the mistakes of 4800 copies of misprinted brochures by hand. Although this task was tiring mentally and physically, after finishing up the brochures, I felt accomplished and happy that these brochures would not go to waste and extra resources would not need to be spent reprinting those new corrected brochures.

Another task was to stick stickers of the department’s logo onto the side of a heart-shaped containers with soap floIrs. These little containers was for a concert that was being held before valentines day for the patients hence the heart-shaped designs. These concerts help to cheer the patients up and entertain the patients, keeping patient’s spirits high in Changi General Hospital. After finishing these tasks I also felt a sense of accomplishment as it was for the patients.

Another task was to ‘get well soon’ stickers on It tissue packets. Although I was not informed of the objective of the task, I can infer that it was to cheer up to morale of the sick patients and hence filling up our extra time with fulfilling tasks.

Another task was to put a printed out survey online using a software called Survey monkey. As Survey Monkey was another new software, I had to familiarise ourselves with the functions of Survey Monkey to input the hardcopy survey into a softcopy one. I input the survey onto the website and sent the softcopy to our mentor.

Afterwards, I was tasked to key in a patient satisfaction survey done by patients corresponding to their doctors. This was to be done on microsoft excel which was a relatively familiar software. But having to check the bed number of the patients and the corresponding doctors was quite troublesome as I had to keep flipping the papers and keying in the results. After sometime, I finished the entry of the data

As Chinese New Year was around the corner, I was tasked to use red packets to create origami and festive decorations to decorate the office and bring out the festive mood. As it was the year of the rat, I made mainly made origami rats using red packets while also making traditional Chinese New Year decorative pieces like the fish and lanterns.

Work done:

1. A&E video
2. 4 Breast Cancer videos
3. Financial counselling video
4. Correcting of brochures
5. Sticking of logo onto containers
6. Sticking ‘get well soon’ stickers on wet tissue packets
7. Putting survey online
8. Key in data from survey
9. Making origami

3 content knowledge/ skills learned

The first thing I learned was time management and organization. As this was a professional organization, I had to be timely on delivering our tasks as soon as possible and allowing our mentors to check on our work to correct the mistakes, producing a quality product within a limited amount of time. Time management was also important as I wanted to help the organization do as many tasks as possible as it benefits the patients, hence with proper time management I could do multiple tasks within the short span of one month. I also had to organize all our thoughts to not get distracted when doing our task to prevent errors in our work. Organizing our workload was also important so as to not overstress ourselves or try and quickly finish all our tasks too quickly and hence not producing a quality product. Organizing between ourselves on who does what allows us to finish the task more efficiently and yet keeping up the standards of our project.

The second thing I learnt was the real truth behind breast cancer myths. As there was a lot of queries and myths about breast cancer in the general public, our group was tasked to create videos about them to clear up these myths. Hence I learnt a lot of new facts that was previously unknown to me or was wrong. One of these myths are that mastectomy is needed for breast cancer treatment. HoIver this is wrong as when breast cancer is detected early, it is usually small, and therefore, mastectomy is not required and only certain parts of the breast tissue needs to be removed in cases like these. This was eye-opening as I managed to bridge the gaps in our understanding and further improve our knowledge on breast cancer

The third thing I learned was how to work with people I have never worked with before. As i have never worked with people in my group before, I learned how to work with them by effectively communicating. Working with our mentors was also a new experience, allowing me to experience the feel of a professional workplace and learn how to work with new and different types of people.

2 interesting aspects of your learning:

The first interesting aspect of my learning was the department I was working in. Our department was in charge of patient experience in Changi General Hospital. Before knowing this, when hospitals come to mind or even healthcare, I often think of the doctors and nurses. However, after this experience, I have come to notice many different other departments supporting the hospital from the shadows. This brought to light many unsung heroes working tirelessly behind the scenes to help give the patients a higher quality of healthcare, changing our general perception of hospitals.

The second interesting aspect of my learning was the workspace and professional environment I was in. My mentors were very professional and meticulous in checking my group’s work, picking up small details that we did not spot in making our products. This allowed me to experience what the working world would feel like and learn more from this experience. This also changed my understanding of the working world.

1 takeaway for life :

One takeaway for life is that we must appreciate those who work behind the scenes and are almost never in the spotlight, teaching us not only to look at the surface but also dive deeper and see the whole picture, appreciate those who work behind the scenes. For instance, in CGH, the people in the spotlight are usually nurses and doctors. However, as we had learnt throughout or WOW! Programme, we realised that there is much more work done behind the scenes by those working in the offices of the hospital to ensure everything runs smoothly and everyone is pleased when visiting the hospital.