Lifestyle

Food Playground thanks home nursing community with baked muffins, biscuits


Singapore

WHILE people were busy decorating their households to celebrate Chinese New Year back in late-January, the management team at Home Nursing Foundation (HNF) was already making preparations for the onslaught of Covid-19.

Chief executive officer Christina Tiong gestured to boxes of packed medical supplies in the office and said: “We had to be ready, and right now, we are prepared to work from home too. These boxes of medical items are to be sent to the various nurses’ homes by HNF van and transport drivers.”

Mention people at the frontline fighting the invisible enemy named Covid-19, and images of doctors, and nurses at hospitals invariably pop up.

However, there is also a group of healthcare professionals – comprising doctors, nurses and therapists – who work for home healthcare service providers such as HNF who are also the first line of defence.

Dr Tiong said that a lot of their patients suffer from chronic diseases, are frail and homebound, and the team of about 70 healthcare professionals does home rehabilitation to help patients recover.

She added: “They are mostly elderly people who have mobility issues. If they have to be admitted to hospitals during this period of time, the facilities will be further overwhelmed.

“We are also building up the capability to care for them at home. Not many people know about us as we usually remain in the background and have no physical facility that attracts attention.”

Heightened security measures have been taken amid the current situation.

Besides cleaning commonly shared areas more frequently, and segregated teams coming into office at different times, nurses will call patients before visit, and if the household is found to be at high-risk exposure, the staff will don the full personal protective equipment (PPE) when making house visits.

Currently, non-urgent visits to high-risk households will be deferred till the 14 days incubation period is over, with calls to check in on the patient and family.

Renuka Nagalingham, a nurse clinician at HNF, said: “During this period, we have heightened our vigilance . . . Of course, asking these questions over the phone may not give you the correct picture. When we make the visit and deem that this patient could be having some symptoms, we will step out of the house and don our full PPE. We all have one or two sets in our bags for any emergency.”

The 44-year-old said with a laugh that they are used to lugging a heavy bag around.

Professional responsibility and image to uphold

However, the mood turned serious when the topic on public’s reaction during the initial stage of the outbreak was broached.

The nurse clinician, who has been with HNF for 11 years, said that some of them did face some discrimination initially.

“We community nurses are out all day in the community, caring for patients from house to house, and it is inevitable that some form of discrimination occurs,” he said.

“We had instances of people stepping or walking away from you when you are in your uniform. But we take it in stride as our patients still need our services for the day. There were also a few nurses who were affected by certain encounters in the public transport. But, at the end of the day, we have a professional responsibility and image to uphold.”

Daniel Tan, the founder of Food Playground and a university friend of Dr Tiong, said that he was affected when he heard the stories. “I really wanted to do something for them to show our appreciation. They are the unsung heroes who have done a lot for the community.”

Food Playground is a hands-on cooking school offering cultural cooking classes and corporate team building workshops since 2012.

Although the business is facing headwinds now – business has dropped about 95 per cent in March as the cooking school located in Chinatown caters mainly to tourists – Mr Tan still managed to galvanise his staff, who are stay-at-home mums (SAHMs), to bake 200 goods which range from muffins to biscuits for the staff at HNF.

“It was a good opportunity to engage staff members at this point, for this activity, instead of sitting at home and worrying about the situation. They enjoyed the two days of baking, and got closer with one another in the process. We had no more than 10 staff members, all one metre apart, and wearing face masks during the whole baking process,” said Mr Tan, who delivered the baked goods on both Thursday and Friday.

When asked about the Budget rebates, Mr Tan felt the government is trying their best to help.

He said: “However, it will take a while for us to feel the effect. Ultimately, the government can only help us manage costs, but we must find new ways to generate revenue.

“We came up with some work-from-home ideas, such as helping our SAHMs to sell home bakes and exploring home catering, instead of conducting classes, which was our core business revenue. At the moment, we are exploring online cooking classes.

“We think a crisis is good as it forces you to innovate, incentive to experiment with new ideas.”

The cooking school recently inked a one-year partnership with French dairy brand Elle & Vire, where the latter company will sponsor their gourmet butter and whipping cream to Food Playgroud.

“We started talking about the sponsorship agreement two months before Covid-19. Elle & Vire was trying to expand its presence in Singapore and they are in this for the long-term, so the partnership still went ahead despite the virus.

“They reached out to a few cooking schools for the potential collaboration but chose us as they liked our social mission in helping SAHM to come back to work. Their company has strong CSR values too, and it aligned with ours.”

With this one-year sponsorship, Mr Tan decided to pay it forward to the healthcare workers with this gesture to show their appreciation.





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