Volunteer Patient Programme (VPp) in TTSH Rehabilitation Centre

Background

Volunteers have an important role to play to support patients in their inpatient rehabilitation and their reintegration to the community. One pertinent role volunteers can play in patient care is to complement the rehabilitation team members in preventing unscheduled readmissions due to social reasons. Volunteers could contribute by outreach work that focus on re-educating patients on skills taught during the inpatient rehabilitation programme and by providing timely feedback to the Rehabilitation Centre’s Medical Social Workers on patients struggling or not coping with self care.

TTSH Rehabilitation Centre’s Volunteer Patient programme was established in May 2009.

Roles of Volunteers

The roles volunteers can play in TTSH Rehabilitation Centre are:-

• Befriending patients
• Engaging patients in social activities in the ward & in the community
• Assisting in practical matters like reading letters, ordering and/or purchasing basic necessities & if required escort patient for his 1st medical appointment

Recruitment of Volunteers

Those in the age group of 16 to 62 years old are welcome to register as volunteers in the TTSH Rehabilitation Centre’s Volunteer Patient programme.

Volunteers' Knowledge Development

Acquiring knowledge on disability issues and effective communication skills are paramount to the volunteers’ roles. For this matter, experienced professionals from TTSH Rehabilitation Centre will conduct half day training for you prior to you performing your volunteer work.

The table below describes the in-house training programme to be conducted for newly registered volunteers.

Key Areas	Core Competencies (Total training time – 2.5 hours)	Staff-in-charge
1. Understanding disability	Basic understanding of disability	Rehabilitation physician
2. Befriending skills	Conversational skills & skills in asking questions	Medical Social Worker
3. Wheelchair handling	Understanding safe wheelchair handling	Occupational Therapist
4. Infection control	Understand and practice good hand hygiene practice	Nurse clinician
5. Fire Safety	Understand & know fire safety in the ward	Ward fire warden

Training dates from October 2009 to December 2009

• 20 November 2009
• 22 January 2010
• 19 March 2010

Training time: 2.30 pm - 5.00 pm

Venue of training: TTSH Rehabilitation Centre @ Ang Mo Kio Thye Hua Kwan Hospital, 17 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 9, Singapore 569766

Contact Us

General enquiries: 6450 6186

 

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