The four of us were assigned to the department in Changi General Hospital (CGH) that focused on public relations as well as policy planning and publicity of healthcare policies and programs, including the creation and development as well as the implementation of initiatives such as Our Silvercare Hub. Our department's main aim was to begin new and innovative initiatives that were meant to assist the public to gain access to more convenient healthcare. Initiatives such as Our Silvercare Hub was a collaboration between CGH and Tampines Hub to have a hub for all elderly to meet their needs, be it frequent checkup to therapy and even a centre for the elderly to meet with other elderly.

CGH have been working hard in promoting General Practitioners (GP) to the public, most importantly the elderly that suffer from chronic conditions. Examples include, diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure etc. This is because most of their patients continue to seek medical help from hospitals and polyclinics despite there being a more convenient alternative, General Practitioners.

There are close to 2000 GPs around the island and meet the needs for almost 80% of the country. However, many of us have the common misconception that GPs are only able to deal with the common cold or the fever.

My group's job was to clear the misconceptions that are often associated with GPs. GPs are doctors. They are licensed to administer all types of aid, including the management of chronic conditions. We were tasked with creating a video on the alternative options that are literally right beneath our noses.

During the month of January, the four of us were assigned to create a video on General Practitioners (GP). Before we could, we needed an in depth knowledge of the healthcare landscape in Singapore. Thus on the first day, we were told to do research on Primary Care, Acute Care and Long Term care. However as our video was mainly on primary healthcare, I have included a few paragraphs of our research on Primary healthcare

Primary care is the first line. It is the first contact between patients and healthcare system. Primary care can be separated into two main sources, private and subsidised.

Privatised primary care, also known as GPs tend to be more expensive. In order to ensure Singaporeans all have access to medical care regardless of background, in 2012 the Community Health Assistance Scheme, or CHAS, was introduced. Since then, the government has introduced many enhances to this scheme to give citizens greater benefits and more affordable healthcare.The Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) enables all Singapore Citizens, including Pioneer Generation (PG) and Merdeka Generation (MG) cardholders, to receive subsidies for medical and/or dental care at participating General Practitioner (GP) and dental clinics. Besides subsidies for care at CHAS clinics, CHAS, MG and PG cardholders enjoy subsidised referrals to public Specialist Outpatient Clinics (SOCs), as well as subsidised referrals to the National Dental Centre Singapore and National University Centre for Oral Health Singapore*, if required. The government has recently enhanced the medical subsidies provided for Singaporeans, assuring citizens that no Singaporean will be denied healthcare because they cannot pay.

In his Budget Statement 2019, Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat announced an expansion of CHAS to cover all Singaporeans with chronic conditions, regardless of income. In addition to CHAS blue and orange, CHAS green will allow more Singaporeans to benefit from more affordable chronic care at participating CHAS GP clinics, and enable greater anchoring of chronic care in the community.

Subsidized primary healthcare mainly consists of Polyclinics, a “one-stop” healthcare centre, which have many facilities so that most diagnosis and treatment can be done there. There are 20 polyclinics in Singapore. Provides subsidised primary care, including primary medical treatment, preventive healthcare and health education.

Primary Care mainly treats chronic illnesses and acute illnesses and help patients navigate the healthcare system. Patients must first get a referral from the GP or polyclinic to enjoy subsidies in the hospital.

We were then told to dive deeper into the Primary Healthcare Landscape in Singapore. As previously mentioned, primary healthcare was the first line of introduction for the public to the healthcare system in Singapore. We were told to compare the banes, boons, costs as well as subsidies available in privatised and subsidised primary care.

For privatised care, the price charged will depend on the type of facility and procedure you choose. The cost of consultations may vary based on the timings and locations.

Finally we were tasked with researching about the prevalence of chronic diseases in Singapore. These included diabetes, asthma and hyperlipidemia. We were also told to research on what the government has been doing in order to combat such chronic diseases. Mainly the most preventive measures include eating healthily as well as to reduce smoking.

In order to understand more about the best way to promote GPs to the general public, we were told to go to Specialist Outpatient Clinics to gather as much data on why the public only prefer to go to the hospital to get their chronic conditions checked. We had to craft a full survey from scratch. The hardest challenge was to find the best questions that were not vague and were still able to provide us with the data that we require. After numerous trials and running it by our mentors multiple times, we were able to settle on a list of 12 questions that had multiple drop down questions that lead to more specific answers from the people we surveyed. We mainly targeted the elderly as that was the target demographic.

A collation of our results can be found on the slides below.

Finally we reached the final phase of our project. The last few weeks were the most fun as we had to figure out and come up with creative ideas for the video as well as create the best animation/video we could do. I for one decided to challenge myself by creating a superhero story on how CHAS helps the public. However the idea was scrapped due to it being difficult to get the animation properly and smoothly moving. I might have had a little bit to much fun by creating a scenario where the personification of the cards were tasked with fighting the personification of expensive fees.

There were three main takeaways that I learned while embarking on the journey.

Firstly, I learned how tedious it was to conduct and execute surveys. I learned that it was important to tailor to the needs of the target demographic. Most were elderly and are only able to communicate in their native language. So, as I am a Malay, I translated the survey question to Malay in order to allow the non-English speaking Malay elderly to be able to answer the survey questions. Wenyue, who is a Chinese scholar, translated the survey to Chinese so the non-English speaking Chinese elderly were able to answer the survey questions.

Secondly, I learned that it was important to communicate with your superiors. They are knowledgeable and are able to help you understand the context of the demographic we were targeting. Without the insight of the mentors, we would definitely not have been able to communicate and craft our survey to gather the data we required. The mentors were also able to provide constructive feedback to our videos, helping us improve on them.

Finally, I learned how important the second language is. Without Malay, I would not have been able to interact with the aunties and uncles who were more approachable when I talked to them in Malay. I was also surprised that I could communicate seamlessly with some Chinese aunties and uncles who were more comfortable with Malay than English.

Two interesting aspects was that the medical sector did not only involve doctors and nurses as well as hospitals. My group was posted to the office building in Tampines Plaza. There we met a lot of people. On-call nurses who were constantly on their phones, calling recently discharged patients about their well-being. Another was that a majority of the people in the office had degrees in other fields outside of medicine. A mentor had a degree on biological research. Another was a business management major.

The lifelong lesson was that its important to love what you do. The office environment was friendly and infectious. It motivated us to work hard.