Teaching the Young to Care for the Old

Tri-generational Homecare @ North West (Trigen for short) is a NUS Medicine community project that brings together healthcare students and secondary students to create an environment beneficial to health recovery for elderly people. Chester Tan (Phase II) and Xiong Zhong Hui (Phase III) tell us more.

In the 7th year since our project’s beginning in 2012, we’ve gone through eight cycles of volunteers and beneficiaries. Since our pilot cycle, we’ve worked with 422 team leaders, 492 secondary school students, and have reached out to 135 patients.

Ong Yan Ling, Trigen Project Director, says, “We’re looking to empowering youths to be responsible citizens of a compassionate community.” Our goals have always been to inspire holistic care for the geriatric population through bringing a first-hand understanding of community care to university students studying in the healthcare sector, as well as secondary school students. We build our model around long-term interaction with the geriatric population and believe that we can only truly begin to understand one another over time.”

Through multiple training sessions, team leaders and secondary school students have been equipped with basic medical knowledge and skills, as well as the communication tools that would aid them in interacting with the elderly. This sets the foundation for future home visits where they will utilise these skills to better understand these elderlies.

Our commitment to building an inter-professional healthcare project can be seen in the diversity of people from different faculties in our committee and volunteers, with students from NUS Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Social Work, NTU Medicine, SIT Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy.

The upcoming Cycle Nine will mark the beginning of an expansion in Trigen. We are moving from a six-month cycle to a one-year cycle, to better facilitate a deep-rooted connection between teams and the elderly. We are also expanding our patient profile to include SMART patients. This cycle also marks an increased exploration of technology, through the pilot launch of an app that allows students to keep track of their interactions with their elderly, as well as access online resources at the touch of their fingers.

Through these years, we’ve been fortunate to come under the mentorship of Vice-Dean (Education), Associate Professor Lau Tang Ching, who has guided us from strength to strength. Our strong partnership with North West CDC and the Yishun Health Ageing-In-Place programme has enabled us to build a strong brand and core support network, allowing us to continue creating opportunities for students to come under our wing and grow with us.