Premiere of “Beyond the Physical”: All new series on Athletes with Disability.

Meet Singapore’s best Athletes with disability in their sporting and life journeys in this groundbreaking new series that features the crossing of paths between them and their able-bodied counterparts.

“Beyond The Physical” premieres on 16 June 2008, 7.00pm on Channel 5.

Be sure to catch it.

The Chronicles of Higher Education

The Wired Campus. June 17, 2008

A Professor of Pediatrics Uses Podcasts to Enliven Bacteriology

Sarah E. Forgie, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta, gives medical students song parodies and other offbeat study aids for her bacteriology class. Her favorite podcasts include “Sweet Tetani” (an infectious sendup of “Sweet Caroline”) and “Bad Bugs” (a parody of the Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch”).

Q. Why did you start doing podcasts?

A. This was actually a summer project I had a student do. I just had an idea. My kids love their iPods, and my husband loves his iPod. I’m not quite as savvy, but I thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if I could put something interesting and succinct on an iPod for my course?

Q. What did the student come up with?

A. I gave him the general information for the course and let him think about it and what would be useful to students. He made weekly reviews, including some songs.

Q. How were the podcasts received?

A. They were really helpful. Our hypothesis was that the students would like the songs better than the spoken podcasts, but they were pretty much equally well received.

Q. Did students who used the podcasts get higher grades?

A. The surveys about the podcasts were anonymous, so we don’t know.

Q. What other kinds of alternative teaching methods do you use in your class?

A. I do a beatnik poem about Harry Houdini. [The magician died of an infection after his appendix ruptured.] I came up with a way of setting this poem to music and called it “Harry Houdini and the Enteric Jazz Band.” I said, “Here are the bugs that are the big players in abscess formation. This bug is this instrument, and that bug is that instrument.” I started telling the story of how Harry Houdini died. At one point the saxophone stops and the other instruments keep going, just like how this one bug doesn’t die and sits there and waits for the right conditions. When the conditions are right in the story, the sax starts playing again. It kind of was to symbolize the time it takes for an abscess to form. In tests I found that stuff presented in notes or in more didactic lecture form resulted in 50- to 60-percent recall, and stuff from the jazz band had around 100-percent recall.

Q. Do these methods make your students better doctors?

A. Absolutely. It shows they can have a little bit of fun and still learn, and that not everything has to be serious and boring. —Catherine Rampell

Okays, I am trying to tag various Occupational Therapy (OT) Books for this blog. One of the reasons to share out with the OT professionals and students about book sharing and recommendation of books. This to mobilize a knowledge round the sphere of allied health care industry. Well, how did I do this?

Let’s me introduce to you guys BookJetty.com. BookJetty.com is a social utility that connects you with your friends’ bookshelves. Doesn’t need to be OT related. Novel and any type of storybooks will do. You can share and reckon all the books that you wanted, reading and read to your networks of friends. Make new friends through the interest of book. Plus, check out the widget above, that I have mashed up and reckon to the OT community to read.

If you wish to know more about BookJetty.com, you can visit to BookJetty.com.

If you wants to know and meet the community in BookJetty.com via Facebook, here is the url.

Lastly, if you want to find more Occupational Therapists based in Singapore, via Facebook, here is the url.. Join us in this Singapore Facebook Occupational Therapy and we can share our knowledge practice in this industry via social networking approach.

What can BookJetty.com do for us?

• Connect with Your Friends’ Bookshelves
• Discussion Boards
• Recent Discussions
• Import Books
• Invitation
• Notifications
• Smart Bookshelf
• User Wall Posts
• RSS Feed
• Unicode Support
• More Bookstores

For more detail, you can read from the developer of BookJetty.com’s blog, here.

What can I wish for in the near future?

I hope La Trobe University’s librarians would also connected their university’s OPAC with BookJetty.com. Just like NTU Library, NLB, UOW Libraries and the other 300 libraries.

By the way, La Trobe Libraries has facilities for people with disabilities & special needs. Wow, this is a good. In Singapore, lot’s of the libraries here actually miss out this part. For example, in NTU library (the older buildings, as also in NYP Libraries. In fact, most of the library entrance in Singapore are actually unfriendly to disabilities with the 3M Gates greeting all the patrons right door of the libraries. I hope, local librarians would actually look take this serious, as Suhaila did mention to me, the next few year, there will be more elderly in Singapore, especially the public libraries. The Government has to cater such needs.

What come to my mind straight?

Unfortunately, I spend with my paternal grandfather only till I was 7 years old. He left us in a misfortune accident, due to a flight of ladder. And couple of other stories from my friends, on how their grandfolks left them. At least 60%, are due to unfriendly infrastructure, such as in vehicles, homes and public areas. One thing, I learnt about having grandfolks at home, they are the best librarians (plus with any former training). Their knowledge and strories share with the grandchildren are great. It is seldom to hear father and mother sharing their childhood stories with their children. But between grandfolks and children,tones based on my observations. This is one of the factors that actually contribute to generation gaps.

Anyway, that is my view point. Till now, I left you guys, with BookJetty.com.

My FYP group has submitted an edited version of our research to The 9th International Mental Health Conference Committee. After the long wait, we finally received the good news! Our abstract has been accepted! That means we will be presenting at the conference which will be held in Gold Coast this August. Refering to the programme schedule, our paper will be presented on the 2nd day of the 3-day conference.

Here are our biographies and abstract:-

Organisation: Nanyang Polytechnic
Suburb City: Singapore

Biography: Ms Chai YanLin Elaine Elaine is a graduate of Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore in 2008. She is currently pursuing her degree conversion at the University of Sydney. She has received a scholarship for her undergraduate studies. Her special interests lie in the area of mental health, which include psychosocial rehabilitation, vocational rehabilitation, groupwork processes and dynamics, and art therapy. She co-authored a study on the value of Day Centres in the rehabilitation of psychiatric patients in Singapore, which was presented at the 2007 World Mental Health Congress.

Ms Suhaila Mohamed Usuludin graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore with a Diploma in Occupational Therapy. Her areas of interest lie in geriatrics, neurorehabilitation, driving and work rehabilitation. She believes in life-long learning and will be pursuing the degree conversion programme in La Trobe University, Australia, in July 2008. She co-authored a study on the value of Day Centres in the rehabilitation of psychiatric patients in Singapore, which was presented at the 2007 World Mental Health Congress.

Paper Title: Effects of Hospital Admission and Attendance Pattern on Vocational Status at the 3 Day Centres of the Institute of Mental Health, Singapore: A Comparative Study.

Authors: Chai YanLin Elaine, Suhaila Mohamed Usuludin, Heng Shih Hui, Lye Yuli and Jo Hobman, Nanyang Polytechnic; Liu Bonnie WT, Institute of Mental Health

Paper Abstract: Mental health services in Singapore are moving towards community-based treatment. In addition, the Supported Employment model is adopted in vocational rehabilitation. These changes have resulted in a need to review psychiatric Day Centres, with the aim of identifying strategies to maximize their effectiveness and complement current vocational rehabilitation programmes. Singapore’s 3 Day Centres run on a hybrid model comprising of sheltered employment, cottage industry and day care centre services. Important objectives of the centres include optimizing the current functional level of patients and facilitating their eventual return to work. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the effects of hospital admissions and attendance pattern at the Day Centres on vocational status. 368 patients attending the Day Centres from January 2004 to March 2005 were categorized into 3 groups, namely regular, non-regular and under attendees. Their hospital admissions and length of stay 2 years before and after attending Day Centres were compared. Results show that non-regular attendance is the best predictor of obtaining competitive employment. Findings also suggest that the first year of Day Centre treatment yields the most improvement and Day Centres have a value in facilitating reduction in average length of hospital stay, as well as facilitating Supported Employment.

Keywords: attendance pattern, employment, hospital admissions, mental health, psychiatric day centres, vocational rehabilitation.

More updates on this soon!

I looked at his chest. There was a small rectangular bump on his right upper chest. What is it? I knew it’s a machine. But what is it?

It’s a deep brain stimulator for a person with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Oh! After googling it to find out more about it, I discovered a video on a patient with PD, who had undergone a surgery to install the deep brain stimulator. It shows its effects! Deep brain stimulation regulates the firing of the motor neurons to reduce the effects of Parkinsonism. However, not all patients will have positive effects with the stimulation.

The videoclip I had mentioned previously also focuses on how PD has affected the patient’s quality of life. Dignity, pride and self-esteem came into play. A good video indeed.

Part 1

Part 2

I attended the 1st Geriatric SIG yesterday after work at Alexandra Hospital. It was organised by the Singapore Association of Occupational Therapists (SAOT). The turnout was great. Most of those attended were students. I’m one of the few clinicians there. Nevertheless, it was nice to know each other, both clinicians and the students.

The SIG was about Parkinson’s Disease (PD). I didn’t know that cigarette smoking and caffeine are protective factors of PD! But whatever it is, cigarette smoking causes more harm than good. So don’t smoke! As for caffeine, take them in moderation. Some new things that I learn were the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale and Kingston Centre Model: 5 Principles. They are:-

Movement is normal but requires activation.

Each movement and cognitive sequence has to be broken into components.

Concious attention to each movement and cognitive task is required.

Cues are needed to start and maintain movement.

Avoid simultaneous task: motor and/or cognitive.

The presenter was Natalie Chew, a principal OT from SGH. She gave us a few recommendations on biographies and books to understand the condition better. The ones I took down were:-

Biographies

Lucky Man: A Memoir by Michael J. Fox

The Greatest: Muhammad Ali by Walter Dean Myers

Books

Living Well with Parkinson’s

Parkinson’s Disease: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier

While searching in the WWW, I found these presentation slides useful. However, it focuses more on the physical area as it was meant for physical therapists.

I’m glad that I went for the talk as my knowledge on this disease expands through sharing etc. I hope to attend more of such SIG in future.

Cool, now I can just post all my thoughts and ramblings here on my OT Blogs. And, at the same time, the posting will be push and appear on my Facebook account. Friends in Facebook now too can keep update with the relevant knowledge that I am sharing in my profession work. This is a cool tool, using WordBook.

WordPress updating a Facebook profile’s Mini-Feed.

Summary of WordPress blog posts in a Facebook profile.

By the way, here is my Facebook Badge:

25 April 2008

Dr Earl Lu from NUH is an amazing presenter. He engaged the audience with his hilarious videos and eye-catching pictures, even though it was 7.30am. I attended his presentation on BONT. Oh my! BONT has MANY uses, and not only cosmetics as people know. It is used to relax smooth muscles, skeletal muscles as well as glandular tissues. Besides its uses, his presentation covers the mechanism, indications and contraindications, current research and the future of BONT.

All these information can be found from Medline. In the meanwhile, as a Youtube addict, I have found this videoclip which gives a simple explanation of its mechanism.