Jurong General Hospital Project Initiation Workshop

Our Facilitator Roy Barton

Active Participation

Crafting the Charter and Project Values

Intense deliberations on how we word the charter

The JGH Project Charter with ALL our Signatures

Hospital planning for Jurong General Hospital has gone the next level with the conclusion of the Project Initiation Workshop today.

The JGH core team, partner from St Luke's, winning consultants, LTA, URA, MHA and PMlink spent the last 2 days discussing how to work together over the next 5 years to build a integrated patient-centred healthcare facility in Jurong to benefit the community in the west.

The session concluded on a high note with a commitment to the Project Charter that we developed together with all participants putting on their signatures.

Here is where the interesting development work starts and I could tell that everyone is very excited about this creation that we are embarking on.

JGH's plans for Integrated Care

The Straits Times and Zao Bao carried news about Jurong General Hospital's plans to integrate care for Singaporeans. JGH will partner St Luke's in an integrated development at a 5.5 ha plot at Jurong East Street 21 (in front of IMM).

Do read the articles to find out more...

Straits Times article (Note that the photo in this article is different from the one in print news)

Zao Bao Article

2 Brains better than 1...

Today, I heard many no-brainers or motherhood statements such as "If you don't know something, it does not mean it does not exist", "AND is better than OR", "you can have the things that you are passionate about", "yes or yes", "you can do it, if others can do it"...

Many of these we know when know, and quite often we don't know what we don't know, until we know. And when we do know, we sometimes ask ourselves since we do know, why does it take reminding for us to practice it?

Here is where 2 brains are better than 1. We need each other to help remind us of the things that are important. The act of "bringing things from the back of our mind (knowledge), to the front of our mind (ie consciousness)" is key to putting into practice what we already know. That's why sometimes, we pay others to tell us the time from our own watch.

It is ok sometimes to marvel at the obvious. Even commonsense can be uncommon sense.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Delivering bad news to patients, it is about bringing comfort not cure

This is an interesting article from the NY Times.

Delivering bad news to a patient when the prognosis is not good is hard, but needs to be done sensitively and doing it well will go a long way for the patient.

The Summo piggy

When I was with SGH, I bought a summo piggy bank as part of fun raising for needy patients.

Just 2 Sundays ago, it was filled to its brim with loose change that I've deposited into the summo daily. So, I brought it to the DBS Bank at Serangoon Gardens where there is a coin counting machine to deposit the amount into my children's account. If you have not tried it before, it is actually quite a thrilling experience - digging the coins out from the little summo and hearing the machine counting - almost like a jackpot machine experience, except possibly in reverse.

The picture shows me waiting for my wife with the little summo by my side before we commenced the exercise of depositing the coins with the bank. The Cisco guard who was pacing up and down at the front of the bank could not hold his grin.

Loose change can count for quite a bit, as you can see...

Proud to be a Singaporean!

I attended my first National Day Rally tonight (Seat H33), and heard first hand PM Lee Hsien Loong's speech.

I am proud of how Singapore has become over the last 50 years, and am extremely excited about how Jurong General Hospital will play a key role in shaping Singapore healthcare to meet the challenges of an aging population. Fast medicine integrating with slow medicine, working together as a system to best meet the healthcare needs of every individuals.

Sometimes we need to slow down to go faster...

This is a lesson while heading out to breakfast this morning with my wife.

The vehicle in front of us was road hogging. Instead of sounding the horn, flashing our headlights and perhaps stretching our arms and fingers for the morning exercise, my wife decided that she will switch lanes and overtake the road-hogger. As she signaled her intentions, cars started to speed up - does this sound familiar? Her natural instinct was to speed up so that her chance of changing lanes would be higher, but all the same, cars on the other lane refused to give way.

So, I told my wife, "why don't you slow down, let the cars go by and then switch lane?" Guess what? It worked. Soon, we were tucking in on our saturday morning noodles accompanied by our kopi-o.

It is a paradox but true beyond the roads that "sometime we need to slow down in order to speed up."

Does Mickey Mouse has a lesson for improving patient experience?

The purist will say no. Healthcare is professional business! Mickey mouse...well...is just mickey mouse. Blasphemy! to even suggest that...

There is a book "If Disney Ran your Hospital" by Fred Lee that one of my new colleague from JGH just reminded me today that says just that.

Go ahead, read it and you will find useful lessons. Otherwise read this summary.

An unexpected moment of friendship and inspiration

Today, for some strange reasons, I turned up at 1pm for a meeting at the Outram Campus that was scheduled for 2pm. Quite unexpectedly, the ex-matron of SNEC also turned up for the same meeting also thinking that the time of the meeting was 1pm. The meeting room was obviously empty except for the 2 of us. Since we have not met for quite a while since I left SGH, we decided to just chat.

The next 1 hour was inspiring. Past retirement age already, she decided to continue to serve. It was clear to me that she wanted to continue to nurture the next generation of nurses with her presence and experience. She spoke about the time when she trained nurses in her younger days. She said, "I did not just train nurses just for eye centre but for Singapore". She went on to talk the need to learn from each other and the need to be generous with knowledge and with each other. She said, "when I have something that you need, I should share it. When you use it, you will improve on it, and later on when I need it, I would have something better in return". How enlightened a person.

I enjoyed the conversation and was energised by the unexpected moment of friendship and inspiration.

There are many great people in Singapore public healthcare system. That's why it feels so good to serve!

Don't Gossip!

It pays to pay attention. Otherwise don't gossip :-)