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About
Who are we?
No, we aren't related to the Greek God Poseidon, but...
Silver Trident is a long-term home visitation initiative by students from the NTU Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), in collaboration with the National University Health System (NUHS), RSVP Singapore and Southwest Community Development Council (CDC). It seeks to serve the elderly population in the Western region of Singapore who are under the CareHub programme by NUHS. Volunteers comprise students from the healthcare faculty of various schools across Singapore, and also senior volunteers from RSVP. After several comprehensive training sessions, volunteers are grouped into multidisciplinary teams to conduct fortnightly home visits to elderly residents who have been recently discharged from NUH.
What do we do?
How exactly do we serve the elderly population?
During our home visits, the holistic healthcare needs of the elderly residents within the setting of their community are first identified. The elderly will then be guided by Silver Trident volunteers and healthcare professionals from NUH to formulate and execute care plans that are personalised to them. We hope that the tripartite collaboration between students, senior volunteers and the elderly themselves will empower the elderly to manage their own healthcare needs across various domains -- medical, functional, psychological, social and financial. Even through small things such as improving their technique for blood glucose monitoring or insulin injection, we hope to help the elderly become more independent in caring for themselves and for their own health, one step at a time.
Volunteer takeaways
We hope to benefit our volunteers too!
As much as we seek to serve the elderly, we also hope our volunteers will benefit from this programme as well. Through exposure to community-based clinical work, students will develop an awareness of the complexities of geriatric healthcare, as well as develop a spirit of interprofessional collegiality when interacting with fellow healthcare faculty students from other schools, which will be invaluable when they start working as healthcare professionals in future. Last but not least, we also hope to foster a spirit of service in our volunteers and help them find joy in the work they do, so as to inspire them and others to continue giving back to the community.