By Ms Candy Chong, Programme Leader, Faculty of Allied Health Sciences
SEGi Sarawak’s Diploma in Healthcare aims to equip students with the appropriate healthcare management knowledge, personal skills and business leadership skills to enable them to contribute effectively to the management of health services. All these students attend practical field-training in their final year of study. One of the advantages of this programme is that the students are given many options for their practical placement.
One such student, James Hiu Ken Hee, has just completed eight weeks of practical training at Trinity ElderCare Kuching. To him, taking care of the elderly is important. He said: “I chose this home for the elderly for my practical placement because I love elderly people. To make an elderly person happy is one of the best things that a young person could ever do.”
He was posted to two different departments during the practical training, namely the reception counter and administrative department. Manning the reception counter required him to use his basic medical, health and social-science skills. As a trainee, he helped to record the body temperatures of all the residents every morning. He also dealt with their family members on health matters. The basic healthcare subjects that he had learnt in college were helpful to him in handling all these scenarios. In the administrative department, he was involved in coming up with activities, which included cognitive games, physical exercises and social interactions, all of which were designed based on the needs of different groups of the elderly.
James also helped in food preparation and distributing it. Through knowledge obtained from the subject Nutrition and Health, he was able to identify the categories of food which should be taken by the residents based on their medical conditions. He voiced his gratitude for having gained the wonderful experience and knowledge from his attachment to these two departments.
Trinity ElderCare Centre is a comfortable and comforting place for the elderly to receive the attention, care and dignity that they deserve, making their remaining years fruitful and meaningful. Because of James’s excellent performance during his practical training, the centre has expressed that it looks forward to having other students from SEGi College Sarawak to have their practical placements with them.