Terry Teh Hao Li (MIC190050)

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

Reflective Writing

Introduction of Microbiology and Hand Hygiene

Terry Teh Hao Li (MIC190050)                                     Date: 7 May 2020

The preparation for the social engagement activity began at the end of the semester 1. Both first and second year students were gathered and brief introduction was given by Dr. Puah to let us understand more about the course structure. I was curious and nervous at first because I had no idea what to do after being told that we need to carry out some activities regarding microbiology in a secondary school not only to help them to expose to knowledge about microbiology, but also to raise their awareness on dangers and problems brought by microorganism.

Due to some schedule problems faced by certain students, the first internal workshop was finally conducted on 13 March 2020. This workshop was considered as a “practice” because everything that we did over there will be carried out too in SMK Sri Pantai a few weeks later, so that we will not be panic and able to give clear instructions to the secondary students without any problems. The workshop was mainly about the introduction of microbiology and hand hygiene. We started off by making a foldscope on our own and then using it to observe different slides of microbes. It was a completely new experience for me as I had never heard or use a foldscope before. Next, in order to expose the students to the types of microorganisms, we were required to blow balloons with different shapes and glue them together, forming microbes with different  appearance such as bacillus, streptococcus and so on. Activities regarding hygiene were carried out for the following hours. Spray bottle containing water with blue food colouring was used to determine how far the water could spread on the mahjong paper in different conditions, such as covering with bare hands, gloves, tissue paper and others. This was to resemble the condition in which the bacteria was spread when a person sneezed and how the effect could be minimised with different covering method. Last activity was to raise the awareness of hand hygiene by determining how the bacteria was transmitted through hand shaking if one did not wash the hands thoroughly. Throughout the workshop I was really glad and couldn’t wait to share these knowledge with the students later.

Sadly to say, everything was cancelled when Movement Control Order (MCO) was announced due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I was disappointed as I felt that the preparation and effort that I spent was wasted. Luckily, the instructor, Dr Puah had suggested an alternative way to pass on the knowledge to the students via internet platform. We were divided into three groups to perform three tasks: making a hand washing tutorial video, creating two infographic posters regarding hand washing and Covid-19 and creating a questionnaire to test the hand hygiene knowledge among the biomedical science students. I joined the questionnaire production group and it actually surprised me when the group members were still so enthusiastic to help each other out by providing opinions on creating the questionnaire even though the country went into lockdown and we were unable to meet the students. The survey was created to study the hand washing practice among the biomedical science students and their understanding on hand hygiene. Besides providing ideas on the survey, I was also responsible for analysation of data by writing a report right after the survey was done. I was glad that everyone was contributed to the task given and the job was settled properly.

Although we have lost the chance to carry out the module in SMK Sri Pantai, I really hope that the students will keep an eye on our blogspot, not just to follow up the information posted but also learn and spread the knowledge to the people surrounding. I hope that the video and infographic posters uploaded can help to solve their confusion or questions regarding hand hygiene and practise it routinely. Not only for the biomedical science students and SMK Sri Pantai students, I also hope that the public is able to perform effective hand hygiene too, at the same time realise the importance of hand hygiene to reduce the risk of being infected of diseases especially during the outbreak of Covid-19. There are over 6,000 Covid-19 cases in Malaysia now so I hope that everyone will always stay at home, keep social distancing and maintain good personal hygiene. I believe that if everyone follow the instructions strictly, we can prevent the spread of virus and overcome the obstacles together.

(762 words)