A day in the life of a Pharmacist at MOHT

A Day in the Life at MOHT series

One of MOHT’s strengths stems from having a pool of talents from diverse backgrounds, facilitating the cross-diffusion of learning and insights within the organisation and across the ecosystem.

“A Day in the Life at MOHT” is a MOHT blog series where featured colleagues relate how their individual talent, experience and practice has enriched MOHT’s tapestry of contributions towards the transformation of Singapore’s healthcare.

In our inaugural edition, we look at a day in the life of pharmacist Dr Valerie Ng, whose interest in creating better patient experience led her to become a key member of MOHT’s Mobile Inpatient Care (MIC@Home) initiative.

Contributed by Dr Valerie Ng

On my first day of work on 5 June 2023, my boss introduced me to my colleagues at the MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT) community as “the second PharmD in the office” as a fun fact. It is not exactly the most fun of facts but that was indeed my profession prior to joining MOHT.

My MIC@Home teammates at the Hospital-at-Home (HaH) Asia Conference 2023: (from left), Yvonne Ng, Michelle Tan, Lai Yi Feng, me (Valerie Ng)

My career started as an outpatient pharmacist with Singapore General Hospital (SGH) in 2012, and in 2018, I advanced my interest in clinical pharmacy and obtained my Doctor of Pharmacy. During my stint at SGH, I was managing pharmacy-led clinics in anticoagulation, inflammatory bowel disease, medication management and haemodialysis clinics. The most enjoyable part of my job was building relationships with my regular patients in the clinics, getting to know about their lives, jobs, family, and not just focusing on their health issues.

With the aim to broaden my perspective of the healthcare landscape in Singapore, I decided to join the Integrated General Hospital team in MOHT, working on the Mobile Inpatient Care@Home (MIC@Home) initative. My primary focus was developing a playbook on service boundaries to align stakeholders’ understanding on care model definitions and scope. The playbook serves to hardcode our learnings in the MIC journey so that we can perpetuate this model to future adopters. This requires extensive research on Hospital-at-Home (HaH) programmes overseas, and multiple hospital site visits with clinicians and programme leads to better understand their individual programme and operational details.

Site visit to SGH@Home with GD(HSG) Dr Kok Mun Foong, D(HS) Dr Goh Khean Teik, MOH Health Services Division and MOH Health Regulations Group (standing at the centre of second row)

Concurrently, I was involved in the scaling and mainstreaming of the MIC@Home care model. I followed up with my healthcare colleagues from the different MIC sites on how to increase service capacity and address their pain points, ensuring workflows and governance were in place for new initiatives, building bridges to MOH to resolve pain points, and gearing up for the mainstreaming of MIC by the Health Ministry. It took me a few weeks to familiarise myself with public health and MIC-related lingo to fully grasp what was going on, especially since the MIC Sandbox had been ongoing for over a year and was rapidly scaling up following the momentum from a study trip to the World HaH Conference in March 2023.

Moderating a HaH Asia Conference 2023 session on advancing medical inpatient care at home with our panellists (from left: Dr Sandra Tan (NUH), Dr Endean Tan (TTSH), Dr Boh Toon Li (KTPH), Dr Wong Jia Yi (MinMed)

On top of these, there are also corporate duties that kept me busy, including secretariat duties, dabbling in publicity, procurement, legal/finance workflows, networking with stakeholders from MOH and industries, organising facilitated discussions with various workgroups and attending high level meetings with various steering committees. Though it might be overwhelming at times, I find it fulfilling and exciting at the same time.

Before I know it, nine months have flown by.

As I write this blog post and reflect on my MOHT journey, I’m thankful for (1) my very supportive teammates who never hesitate to explain concepts to me and introduce me to various stakeholders, (2) bosses who believe in my abilities to independently carry through my tasks, (3) my holistic clinical, operational, planning, research and educational experiences from my SGH pharmacy days to help me navigate the larger healthcare ecosystem. I’m thrilled to find out what’s in store for me for the rest of my journey in MOHT.

MIC@Home team with MinMed’s founder Dr Eric Chiam and Assistant Medical Director Dr Wong Jia Yi

MIC@Home team members with MinMed’s founder Dr Eric Chiam and Assistant Medical Director Dr Wong Jia Yi at the HaH Asia Conference 2023

To any pharmacy friends reading this, getting out of a vocation in pharmacy means a much wider exposure and perspective to the healthcare landscape and more flexibility in working arrangements as you won’t be constrained by operational hours. Even if there is no direct patient care, you’ll still be serving patients from a different angle: brainstorming ways to redesign the way care is delivered in Singapore and materialising it. I still miss direct patient care at times, which I am able to maintain via volunteering at health events and programmes such as brown bagging and TriGen Home Care. Wherever you choose to build your career in, I hope we can all play our part in meaningfully contributing to better healthcare for all in Singapore.

Bonus photos: Celebrated MOHT’s inaugural CSR initiative with colleagues by bringing residents from the Thye Hua Kwan Home for the Disabled on a day tour to Gardens by the Bay.