MedSOC - Volunteering with IMH

HCI Medsoc (Medical Society), is a student-led project that gives students with an interest in the healthcare industry a chance to learn more about Singapore’s healthcare. Notably, I took part in weekly volunteering sessions with my group that was paired up with the Institute of Mental Hospital (IMH).

Volunteering with IMH was not easy. Because of PDPA concerns, the patients could only log onto ZOOM using a shared computer and had to have their cameras and microphones turned off throughout the duration of the session. Hence, we could only carry out activities with them blindly, not able to know if they were enjoying the activities or even taking part in them. Nevertheless, we worked around the situation and asked the nurses for feedback directly. We started learning how to tweak our activities to engage them, focusing on exercises and easy sing-alongs that they seemed to enjoy.

Thankfully, we did manage to go down to IMH to conduct a physical session with our juniors as the COVID-19 situation got slightly better and the regulations were relaxed. Being able to interact with the patients in real life made us realise that many of the activities that we had initially planned and carried out over ZOOM may have been far from suitable. We learnt that the patients probably could not follow our activities such as Origami, as these were too complicated and we also went quite fast at times. Our group reflected on this and found that it really is very important to be able to speak to our beneficiaries directly and find out what they need, so we can actually plan things that they enjoy doing. Nonetheless, it was heartening to see that some of the patients actually recognised us, which also made me realise that sometimes the company and just spending time with the patients may be even more important than the actual activities that we had done.