Trip to Singapore: MHAM and NUS employees at the Centre for Healthcare Simulation
Five MHAM employees recently visited the National University of Singapore (NUS) last October 18, 2016 in relation to MHAM’s directive plan to put up a Skills Laboratory and Simulation Center next year.
Four core group members headed by Chief of Clinics and Associate Dean Dr. Ma. Socorro Manaloto, Associate Chief of Clinics Dr. Axel Elises, Section Head for PD Dr. Louella Quijano, Pedia Staff Dr. Elmer Lopez and IT Consultant Mr. Francisco Bacalla were among those who have appointment with the NUS last week.
“The purpose of the Singapore trip is actually just to benchmark with National University of Singapore on their Center for Healthcare Simulation”, said Dr. Manaloto in an interview.
This is in line with the requirement from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to put up Skills Laboratory and Simulation Center intended for all medical students prior to their exposure to actual patients. “Ideally, students must first try the models, task trainers and simulators so that more or less they will know what to do and how to react on hand with actual patients”, she added.
Interview with MHAM CM Chief of Clinics and Associate Dean Dr. Ma. Socorro Manaloto
According to Dr. Manaloto, MHAM will be putting up a Skills Lab and Simulation Center at the new building in Banawa and hopefully it could be the very first in the Visayas region.
NUS state-of-the-art Skills Laboratory and Simulation Center
The proposed Skills Lab and Simulation Center which will be named as MHAM Skills Lab and Simulation Center will cater undergraduate students and post graduates such as nurses and resident-doctors to update on the skills. “We need to have our own laboratory not necessarily huge and similar to NUS but the idea of putting it up is intended for the undergraduates and will expand it to other professionals in the coming years”, added Dr. Manaloto.
During their visit, an orientation was conducted by Prof. Suresh Pillai who is also the Director of NUS Centre for Healthcare Simulation who always emphasize to all beginners including MHAM to start with a small one as a start-up.
NUS, known as a research-intensive publicly-funded autonomous university in Singapore is consistently ranked as one of Asia’s top and leading universities.
Asia’s leading Medical School
Part of their appointment aside from the orientation and facilities’ tour with Director Pillai was to visit the NUS library to have an idea of an ideal library that will be eventually applied at the new MHAM library- soon to be utilized by students tentatively on May next year.
They also visited the ELSEVIER book publisher which is also considered as the world-leading provider of health information.
In addition, the MHAM core group will propose to the board of directors to join the Faculty Development Workshop sometime on February next year in Singapore.
At present, MHAM is challenged to put up the first-ever Simulation Center in the whole region aside from keeping abreast with the latest simulation’s technological breakthrough and innovation. (Ana Liza Abao)