Cancer patients turn to actively fight cancer, personal experience inspires patients to face life
An Shiyi, reporting
anshiyi@sph.com.sg
infected by the optimistic attitude of his patients, 79-year-old Zhang Qifa hopes to use his personal experience to inspire more people and bring hope to other patients.
Zhang Qifa was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2009. Living with a colostomy bag made him very frustrated and frustrated until he met an optimistic patient.
Zhang Qi laughed and said: "He told me that when others travel abroad, they can't find a toilet, and we don't have such troubles."
Zhang Qinfa, who has changed his attitude towards fighting cancer, has now returned to normal life. He joined the SingHealth Patient Advocacy Network (SPAN) in 2018.
He said: "Through this network, I hope to use my personal experience as a patient to inspire other patients, so that more people can actively face cancer and overcome it."
SPAN recently held the Singapore Patient Advocacy Exchange Conference at the Ngee Ann Company Auditorium of Singapore General Hospital. More than 200 patients, caregivers, medical practitioners, etc. attended, aiming to strengthen cooperation and communication between advocates and healthcare teams, and improve nursing services and patient experience.
In his speech, Rahayu, Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, said that SPAN as a platform can speak for patients and provide advice to healthcare workers from the perspective of patients, thereby helping to improve medical services.
Since January this year, seven SPAN members have participated in a series of projects in the acute department, including an application called CommunicAid, which helps doctors explain the condition to patients through simple legends. "Many doctors will draw simple strokes to help patients understand when they see a doctor, but everyone draws at a different level, and we hope that legends like this can help healthcare workers explain the condition more efficiently and improve communication between doctors and patients."
SPAN also helped the National Cancer Center improve the instruction manual into the Medical Terminology Guide. The manual brings together commonly used medical vocabulary and expresses it in a simpler and easier-to-understand way, for the reference of medical workers, and also popularizes professional vocabulary to patients to reduce communication barriers between the two parties.