CHUNG YI KAI, COEN

Background Information of the Organisation

Singapore Health Services (commonly abbreviated as SingHealth) is Singapore’s largest cluster of healthcare institutions. SingHealth operates SingHealth Polyclinics, a network of primary care polyclinics largely situated in the southeast, east, and northeast Singapore. They provide primary care services to the population in those areas, and also provide training for aspiring family medicine physicians. Our group was tasked with sourcing and adapting existing resources, and creating deliverables that could plug gaps of knowledge within the community. The aim of the deliverables would be to allow information to be passed on and absorbed easier by polyclinic-goers, and ensure that they have a place to find updated medical information.

Interviews

We had done a multitude of interviews with both staff and patients from Bedok and Marine Parade polyclinics, and had asked them questions such as "What is your preferred method to increase awareness about medical information." I personally feel that these interviews are important as majority of polyclinic regulars are the elder generation who undergo frequent checkups, hence accommodating to them is important. From the many interviews we had, most of the interviewees stated that social media would be the most promising and effective method of dispersing information, but they all added on that not everyone knew how to operate a mobile device/use the Internet.

For example, one interviewee (age 52) said "I myself would use social media or the Internet to look for information, but for people such as my father, who's old in age, I know that he would find the Internet foreign and would be unable to look for what he needed. Hence, I think the default posters and videos are not bad, especially with somewhat long waiting times in polyclinics, it gives us something to read/listen to, and the information can sink in."

From the patient interviews we conducted, about 72.5% of the interviewees were age 60 and above, hence our group decided that our deliverable was not to be in the form of social media.

Process of creating deliverables

Following the interview, our group decided on creating 2 deliverables, a poster and a video. After further discussion, the content of our poster was decidedly on the latest Wuhan coronavirus, and the video was to be a frame-by-frame animation that depicted the symptoms of deteriorating mental health.

As the Wuhan coronavirus was discovered in December 2019 and is in the process of becoming a pandemic in February 2020, there is a chance that many people do not know the proper way to prevent the coronavirus from spreading to themselves. Also, there are many posters that have been created by professionals and experts that talk about other various medical information (e.g. scoliosis, retina detachment) that 3 IP5 students would be unable to beat. Thus, we decided that as the Wuhan virus was a new and trending virus, a poster detailing the symptoms and prevention methods would be both useful and relevant to be placed in a polyclinic.

We met our external mentor, Dr Peter Moey, on 15th January, and presented to him a small uncompleted storyboard depicting the contents of our animation. Upon consulting him, he taught and informed us about various intricate details that we should take into consideration for our content, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders, which clearly classifies the stages and symptoms of depression and mental illnesses, as well as severity. This helped to prevent us from having inaccurate or vague information in our animation.

However, following that, we had made a mistake in our time allocation and when we started on the frame-by-frame animation, we knew there would not be enough time to complete it. Hence, after a swift discussion, we had to scrap our original plan and we ended up doing a voiceover video that talked about diabetic patients and different treatments of kidney failure. When we had toured the Marine Parade polyclinic, we were given a short tour around and I had noticed that there were rooms specifically for dialysis. In 2017, PM Lee had stated that "3 in 10 [people] over the age of 60 have the disease [diabetes]." As mentioned earlier, majority of polyclinic-goers were elderly folk, hence we felt that this video would be relevant.

Considerations

Throughout the creation of our deliverables, there were many considerations that we had to account for and think about, but we did overlook a few.

A key consideration that we should have taken into account would be a demographic of the races of the people who went to the polyclinic. Although all the interviews were conducted in English, we should not have assumed that everyone else who frequents the polyclinic is able to understand English. Especially since the deliverable was in a video form, some elderly folk may not be able to catch on to the words we used due to hearing disabilities, or a slow mental cognitive understanding. Thus, when the voice-over video was created, it was fully in English without any subtitles. Thus, if ever given the chance to redo the video, we would definitely add in subtitles/do a voice-over in other languages, to make it more accessible to the multi-racial Singaporean population.

Final Presentation

On 31st January, with our completed poster and video, we presented it to our teacher mentors, the other groups that were in SHP too, as well as the overall teacher in-charge of WOW!2020. It was enlightening to view other groups' presentations that shared similar aspects, yet were all so different, even though we were all in the same polyclinic with the same mentor.

3 Content Knowledge/Skills Learnt

1. I learnt about the architectural and interior design that polyclinics have in order to optimize and better the user experience. First of all, the rooms of a polyclinic are smartly placed in a sense that patients would not have to go back and forth, but they can instead walk in a certain path to get what they need. (e.g. Registration -> Checkup -> Medicine Collection -> Payment) Having to take into account people with mobility issues that require wheelchairs etc, there also needs to be proper allocation of space to ensure accessibility, and this really opened my eyes to the amount of planning and work that must go into the creation/design of a polyclinic.
2. I learnt about sensitivity and privacy when it came to interviews. As we were interviewing patients, a lot of whom were elderly, Dr Moey had told us to be cautious in the kind of questions we asked. Putting ourselves in their shoes, asking ourselves, "Would I like it if someone asked me that question?" enabled us to ensure that we displayed sensitivity to the patients there. Some of them might also be uncomfortable disclosing the purpose of their visit to polyclinic, or talk about the illness/disorder they have. Also, when taking pictures of the polyclinics, we had to take special care to make sure there were no patients/staff in the pictures due to privacy reasons.
3. I learnt about the type/quality of the posters that are put up in polyclinics. The posters had to accommodate to everyone, which meant that they had to be of decent size so that people may view it. Not only that, many of the posters we saw were in 4 portions, one for each of Singapore's commonly spoken languages. As the polyclinic's target audience consisted of many varying people, posters had to be created with considerations. This also showed me the importance of understanding our target audience so in the future, we are able to streamline and focus our end product to suit the consumer need.

2 Interesting Aspects of my Learning

1. Despite what I mentioned above about polyclinics having good interior design/spacious layouts, upon visits to the Pasir Ris and Marine Parade polyclinics, there was truly a lack of space. On the first day meeting Dr Moey, the room he booked in Pasir Ris polyclinic was originally meant for researchers, and they had to sit outside the room to do their work instead. With polyclinics playing a huge part in Singapore's healthcare, I find it interesting that many polyclinics still face space constraints when they should be given enough space.
2. Again, as I had mentioned above, it was difficult to come up with a brand new form of media/topic that had not been done by professionals, and the only forms of media we could do were very limited. Hence, I feel that there was not really anything interesting/new when creating our deliverables. To me, creating the deliverables was very similar to school projects, with the exception of the content of the deliverables.

1 Takeaway for Life

1. Adaptability is extremely important when working on projects. When we started, our initial ideas ended up only being 50% of our final product. Through unexpected events, we were often forced to think on our feet and change our plans quickly to make sure we had time. I feel that this is a very important skill to have in any future endeavors, be it entering the workforce or studying.