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Background information
Background information
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.
Background Information of our project
We were tasked to find out the health priorities of a polyclinic and what health information would best increase awareness and plug gaps of knowledge within the community, as well as what sort of communication would be most positively received by a patient. Our group had planned to create forms of media that would eventually be suitable for usage in a polyclinic, as it would cater to polyclinic-goers.
steps involved
steps involved
The first step we took involved creating a timeline so as to ensure that our project would be completed on time.
On the first day of our WOW attachment, we went to Pasir Ris polyclinic where we met Dr Moey, our external mentor. He gave us a tour of the polyclinic and told us his plans for the Eunos Polyclinic. Afterwards he introduced the tasks to each group and asked us to come up with a rough timeline so that he could see how intended to go about our project.
The first step we took was deciding on interview questions to ask patients and staff as what better way than to ask our audience what they wanted themselves? The bulk of the first few days was taken up by creating interview questions and conducting these interviews at the Bedok and Marine Parade polyclinics. By conducting interviews we were able to learn what people preferred and did not prefer and hence were able to tailor our deliverables to their needs. We understood that we would not be able to tailor to everyone and hence had to go with the majority. From the interviews we learnt that as majority of the patients consisted of the elderly we had to give the most importance to their responses and these included being unfamiliar with technology and hence finding it difficult/inconvenient to get their information from websites or apps. They preferred posters and videos as it also allowed them to kill time while waiting to collect their medicine or pay their bills. Even though it would have been fun to implement social media in the creation of our deliverable we had to keep our target audience and their convenience in mind and hence decided to go with a poster and video.
The next step was deciding on what our poster and video should be about. The topic for the poster took little to no time to decide as with the Wuhan Virus taking over the news it was obvious that was a problem that was relevant and would be apt for the topic of a poster. We focused our poster on the symptoms and prevention so as to help people be more aware on what they can do and they can focus on individual responsibility as it plays a huge role.
Initially, we planned to do our video on mental health, depicting the symptoms and where to go to for help. Our plan was to do a frame by frame animation however we were unable to finish it on time as we underestimated how long it would have taken to finish our video. After a brief discussion, we come to the consensus having a video with a voice over talking about the treatments of kidney failure.
We presented our final deliverables on the 31st of Jan to our teacher mentors and the rest of our peers who were assigned to SingHealth Polyclinics for their attachment.
final poster
final poster
With every project, there are bound to be things that could have been improved or done better and ours is not an exception to this. For our video, we did not account for those who were not fluent with the English language. With around 50% of Singapore's population speaking Chinese or other dialects, it would only be fair to at least have included Chinese subtitles for the convenience of our target audience.
3 content knowledge/skills learnt
3 content knowledge/skills learnt
Something that I saw in a new light was privacy when it came to interview questions. During school projects, privacy is not something that is kept in mind as most interviews are through questions on google surveys hence ensuring anonymity. Having to interview people in a polyclinic setting where we did not have the luxury of being in a closed room, we had to create questions that patients would be comfortable answering while still giving us enough data for our project. We also had to re-phrase our questions on the spot as sometimes time wasn’t on our side. We interviewed people who were waiting to pick up their medicines or pay their bills hence we had to make sure to finish by then.
Adaptability was another skill that was reiterated through this attachment as things don't go according to schedule all the time which is why it is important to be able to adapt as and when the situation calls for it, in this case our video.
One of the more content-based things I learnt was how the polyclinics are run as we got tours from Dr Moey himself for the Pasir Ris polyclinic. It was very fascinating to see all the different rooms and how each department is run.
2 interesting aspects of your learning
2 interesting aspects of your learning
As our project did not entail us to go out and allowed us to work from the comfort of our homes there weren’t a lot of opportunities for us to make observations. As for the polyclinics themselves something that was interesting to see was that when patients interact with nurses compared to doctors, the treatment is quite different. They seem to have a stigma where they believe doctors are the only people who are qualified to talk to them about their illnesses or conditions.
Another interesting aspect was the role our mentors both school and external, played in this. With the exception of one meeting where Dr Moey called us back to discuss our project, there were no other meetups involved. If any questions were raised they were easily and swiftly answered through texts and emails which allowed us to finish our tasks independently without any micromanaging involved.
1 takeaway for life
1 takeaway for life
Even though we only spent a couple of days at the polyclinic, it reiterated the importance of health and how being sick is not worth it as it is costly to visit doctors and get medication and it takes up time that could have been spent doing something meaningful or productive. Being the healthiest form of one's self is key to having a happy life as not only does it allow one to feel good about themselves but it also ensures the highest level of efficiency and productivity. Health is not only something that is physical but also mental which is why along with physical health, mental health also needs to be given importance and being healthy is something a lot of people take for granted.
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