It was the start of a new module, Clinical Governance, Safety and Quality in Healthcare, and all my classmates and I were so excited and happy to see each other after a two-week break. We were also so happy to be able to attend a physical class instead of having online class which we were having since March 2020. As usual, during the first class of the module, we were told of our assessments and that was when our bubble of happiness burst. Our lecturer, Prof Dato’ Maimunah Bt A Hamid, told us that for the second assessment, we are required to tell a story from the point of view of a patient. My first thought was “Am I in the right class? Storytelling in an MBA in Healthcare Management class at IMU? Challenging. From the point of view of a patient. More challenges as most of my classmates are healthcare professionals. What are we going to do? How? Thank God this is a group project.”
Dato’ Maimunah then used the “lucky draw” method to place us into four groups. At times like this, I would always be praying that I would get team members who are cooperative and can work together. Finally, we were all placed into teams and I must say, mine is not a bad team, much to my relief. I was in a team of 3 doctors and 2 executives.
| The First Online Meeting |
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| With a round of other assignments, classes and work, we all abandoned this for a while. As the deadline for submission became nearer, my team and I had an online discussion on a weeknight to discuss the assignment. The 3 doctors gave all sorts of examples of real-life scenarios and at the end of the meeting, we had an idea of what we would like to do – to shoot a homemade video on three patients’ story. Why a video, you may ask? Maybe we were thinking too much then but with the rising numbers of Covid-19 cases, there is a possibility of only an online class and some members of the team may not be able to present on presentation day, so in order to meet all the requirements of the assessment’s marking rubrics, we decided that a video was the best option. |
We then arranged to meet on the following Saturday to ‘film’ the video. As predicted, the inevitable happened and with the rising Covid-19 cases, we were back to online classes. There goes our filming opportunity and what a damper to our plans.
Discussions went back and forth with more ideas being thrown in until a storyline with just one patient story was done for the video. Based on this storyline, each individual member was then required to come up with their part of the video. Of course, the deadline was getting nearer and nearer, we had to do this in 24 hours so that we have time to put all the five parts together into one video. As the group leader, I was frantic by this time. I was even more terrified when I found out that one of my team members was not feeling well. How are we even going to get a decent video done for presentation? Needless to say, we managed to get all five parts in time. I must say I truly underestimated the talent of my teammates and what they can do. They really put their heart and soul in this project, became great narrators, actors and actress for the day, and came up with really excellent videos. Even though done individually, when put together, it actually was a reasonably good story. Putting the video together took another 24 hours and it was already the day to submit. We all looked at the video and realised to our horror, some parts were missed out and we had to put it back in, otherwise it does not make sense. So, it was another round of amending the video and hoping for the best. Finally, at a few minutes, before the deadline, we submitted the video with a sigh of relief.
| Presentation Day |
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| The day of presentation came, and I started panicking again. One of my team members had an urgent meeting to attend and would not be there for the presentation. We were lucky we had thought of this eventuality and this team member does not really have to be present during the presentation of the video. Our team were then faced with a second challenge, when we had trouble playing the video as there were issues with the sound. Oh no it was such a good video. Will it be wasted? We tried all sorts of solutions, with everyone including our lecturers and classmates pitching in with ideas. Finally, with a help of our classmate, Brenda, we were able to present our video and it was a hit. Our classmates and lecturers enjoyed the video and it was the talk of the day. Definitely, this made all of us, the team members, so happy and no matter what marks we get for this assessment, it gives us some satisfaction to know that we have done a good job on this even with all the drama that resulted from this. |
Some of the team members, their classmates and lecturers
Written by Ooi Su Yin on behalf of Team C (Dr John Ratnaraj, Dr Nitiyanantam, Nabilah Osman, Dr Jasdeep Singh, Ooi Su Yin).
