SHEIKH MUHAMMAD B SHEIKH M

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 we were 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 journey through the Accident & Emergency(A&E) department at the hospital. This project aims to answer the main queries of the A&E journey, to enable patients to know more about their experience in A&E and to familiarise patients with the processes involved when going through the A&E. As we were only given the content in word form for this project, we planned out scene by scene on a piece of paper to help us better create the video by having a plan and this allows us to finish the task more efficiently and also have a better, higher quality end product.

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, we planned out the scenes that we wanted to put in with the information provided, planning out the animations and planning out the texts we want to put in. After the planning, we executed our plan and with the experience of the previous 5 videos, we quickly finished up the video

After all the videos, we were tasked to do other miscellaneous yet simple tasks around the office.

For instance we were 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, we 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 in the shape of flowers. These little containers were 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 we also felt a sense of accomplishment as it was for the patients.

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

As Chinese New Year was around the corner, we were 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, we 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. Making origami

3 content knowledge/ skills learned

The first thing we learned was time management and organization. As this was a professional organization, we had to be timely on delivering our tasks as soon as possible and allowing our mentors to check on our work to correct any and all mistakes, producing a quality product within the stipulated time frame. Time management was also important as we wanted to help the organization do as many tasks as possible as it benefits the patients, hence with proper time management we could do multiple tasks within the short span of one month, which ended up being 3 weeks instead. We also had to organize all our thoughts and work as a group 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 to 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 we learned was content knowledge on breast cancer. As a result of us making videos on common myths and misconceptions related to breast cancer, we also learned more about the topic as we needed to input such content into our videos. As such we learned some trivia and facts related to breast cancer and how to treat it, its symptoms, and how you should maintain your diet when diagnosed with it. For instance, we learned that mammograms, which is a method of screening for breast cancer, produces the same amount of radiation as that of a flight from Singapore to Hong Kong, which means that it is actually very safe for the body. We also learned that both men and women could get breast cancer. As such, we have become very knowledgeable on breast cancer to quite an extent.

The third thing we learned was collaboration skills. Since we were in a corporate environment, we have to produce a high-quality end product and deliver it as soon as possible so it can be rolled out as soon as possible. This is near impossible on our own so putting our minds together and working to achieve our end-goal was key and a major factor in ensuring the success of all our tasks and projects. Since I was mostly unfamiliar with one of my groupmates, I had to ensure good communication is upheld and also had to ensure that we stayed on task, no matter what happens.

2 interesting aspects of your learning:

The first interesting aspect of our learning was the department we were 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, we often only think of the doctors and nurses. However, after this experience, we 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 and a higher quality comfort experience, changing our general perception of hospitals.

Another interesting aspect of our learning was how detail-oriented and meticulous our mentors were on relatively small details of the project. While to us, such small details could be overlooked, they were quick to point out small details that were incorrect, such as the colour of the triage nurse uniform and how certain scenes, like the triage areas, were portrayed incorrectly. They then explained how the audience they were targeting may misunderstand, and get confused from these small incorrect details. This allowed us to see things from a new perspective and use this to produce a more accurate video to prevent any misunderstandings to occur. This also showed us how much this job and duty means to them as part of the patient experience team and how just because a job might look boring or uninteresting because of certain factors, you must always take it seriously and give 110% to ensure the best quality deliverable.

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 and comfortable when visiting the hospital.