As part of a community service project for public health and in line with IMU Cares mission to promote good health and wellbeing, a group of IMU’s Semester 6 Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) (Hons) – Cohort BP119 students successfully conducted a community service visit to Rumah Charis – Home for the Aged in Taman Lucky, OUG on 8 January 2022.
Pre-visit
Prior to the actual visit, some of the students conducted pre-visit on 4 January 2022 to get to know more about the elderly community as well as to collect some background information about the residents’ medical history and medications that they used. The pre-visit had helped the students to gauge their needs and to effectively prepare and deliver suitable instructional materials. The students learnt that the residents had the history of hypertension/diabetes. An educational video on eyes health was also prepared by the students.
The students took the precautionary measure by checking their health status using the COVID-19 self-test kits before the actual visit, while the residents were requested to wear face masks throughout the entire visit.
During the actual visit, the students had successfully conducted a variety of educational and fun activities with the residents, as follows:
- Measuring fasting blood glucose and blood pressure level to assess efficacy of medications prescribed by the residents.
- Conducting one-on-one medication counselling session and encourage the importance of adherence to medication intake.
- Promoting eyes health through an educational video, focusing on proper ways to prevent eye problems, the importance of taking good care of their eyes and the management of eye complications due to diabetes and high blood pressure.
As the Chinese New Year (CNY) celebrations was around the corner, the students had also taken the chance to decorate the centre, giving out CNY cards, playing CNY songs and making Tangyuan.
The visit has given the students the opportunity to apply their knowledge about medications that they have gained through the BPharm (Hons) programme and helped to further enhance their communication skills through interviews with the elderly. The hands-on opportunities to use the glucometer and the automatic electronic sphygmomanometers have enabled the students to gain confidence in using these equipments with limited supervision.
We believe that through this meaningful project, the residents would be able to improve their understanding about the importance of medication to manage their chronic diseases and the importance of their compliance to their medication.
Dr Puneet have also identified two residents from this home who are critically in need of surgery for cataract. Hence, vision care education is important for the elderly community.
Based on the feedback provided by the participants at the end of the session, the students learnt that one-on-one medication counselling and the eyes health video were very useful to the residents.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Rumah Charis and we wish the elderly good health and happiness in 2022 and in the future.
Thank you to Dr Louis Liew Yun Khoon, our supervisor for giving us advice and helping us a lot throughout the project planning and execution. We also would like to thank Dr Mayuren for his participation and support.
IMU Cares would like to congratulate, Dr Louis Liew Yun Khoon, Dr Mayuren and 4 students namely Ng Woei Lin, Michelle Chai Yet Ling, Ling Wei and Joey Chong for the success in executing the initiative.
Written by: Ng Woei Lin
Edited by: Dr Mayuren Candasamy
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