1101. Internship and experiential learning

Nov 14, 2014

Hi Dr Sing,

We have come to the end of another cycle of our Gap Semester and once again, I would like to thank Toa Payoh Vets for allowing our boys to be attached to you.

We asked the boys about the programme and they were very positive about their experience with you.  We hope they have not caused you and your colleagues too much trouble.

FEEDBACK FROM BOYS

I have attached some feedback from the boys.  Included are some words of appreciation which they had submitted on their own accord.

LOOKING TO 2015

We hope to continue this partnership with you next year. 

Possible dates:

Currently, the possible blocks of dates for next year are:

Block 1- 2 to 15 Aug (2 weeks)

Block 2 - 16 to 29 Aug (2 weeks)

Block 3 - 13 to 26 Sep (2 weeks)

Number of boys

This year, we had vacancies for 4 boys (2 in Block 1 and 2 in Block 2).

Can we continue with the same number/dates or will you like to offer more vacancies and choose a different block(s)?

Description

Based on this year, the description of the Work Attachment is as follows:

Career Field/Interest	·         Interest in Veterinary Medicine
Pre-requisites/ Expectations	·         Minimum GP of 4.0 for Biology ·         Must love/want to work with animals ·         Preferably able to do/learn simple video production using Windows Movie Maker ·         Willing to work in an environment which requires you to come in direct contact with animals and animal wastes.
Description	·         Students will be shadowing a Veterinary doctor ·         They will be observing and working in a real environment dealing with animal healthcare.  Hence, students must not have an aversion to the sight and smell of blood and must be comfortable in handling animals. ·         As part of the attachment, students will be tasked to do simple video recording and production for educational and research purposes.

Would we be able to proceed with this arrangement for next year?

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Thank you for your interesting feedback. Most of the young interns want are to see all the cases and then go home happily. If there are two at one time, they prefer to chat and do their own things. As they do not work long hours or weekends, they have little time to create videos of their cases or do research. So they have to do time management and not see every case. Seeing is more fun. Writing is a chore for the young generation.  

Case recording and then video production of the case is an important part of experiential learning (if I have got the spelling correct). I improve my skills and expertise by doing this as I will do more research on the particular disease to create quality content in my case report on my blog or video.

Video creation takes too much time as there is a need for me to teach and revise many of the interns' drafts and edit their grammatical errors.   

Many interns e.g. Intern G was given the least video work compared to his counterpart when I assess they are not so capable of video creation. He still has not edited the video I had asked him through you as he had not contacted me. Once the interns leave with uncompleted work, they seldom bother to complete.  

I will be available in the mornings from 9.30 am to 11 am on weekdays. Pl tel me 9668 6468 one day in advance to meet.