I realised searching for module reviews on Public health modules are as rare as catching a rare Pokemon. Decided to do a review for SPH3104 as I would like to advise which group of students to take and module and which group of students to not take it.
Grading criteria
- Individual Assignment (30%)
Individual essay assignment, max 1500 words (given in week 2, due in week 3)
You will be given a topic to write an essay about, asking you to describe the problems, causes and some possible solutions to solve that problem related to Public Health. There are 4 different topics, whereby the class will be split into 4; those with the same topic will form a group to work on the group project which determines majority of your grade (besides the final exam)
My topic was barriers to the uptake of vaccination (both influenza and pneumococcal vaccines) in elderly. Pretty simple and straightforward, but make sure if you get references from other countries, justify how is it applicable to Singapore (some similarities and characteristics between SG and the countries)
30%: Presentation (15minutes + 5 minutes Q&A by panel of judges)
10%: Peer assessment (basically to make sure you're not the slacker of the team)
SUPER DUPER TIME CONSUMING cos we had to coordinate with a doctor from the CDC and get him to understand what we wanted to do for our project, and it took awhile for him to help us liaise with potential CCs to interview their elderly for our project. Had several meetings with him to discuss and craft out our survey questions, and had to go down to several places to conduct 1 to 1 surveys with the elderly (plus communication problems wasn't of much help also). But for 40% of your total grade, it was ok? and was a pretty good experience which can value-add if you intend to go into the research route (whether in the public health field or not)
- Final exam (30%)
30 MCQs and 3 SAQs
I wasn't expecting such a tough paper as they tested content that they did not pay much attention on. The profs were telling us that they were testing on concepts rather than those medical terms, etc. But WHAT ON EARTH, the minute details of the infectious diseases were tested. And since I wasn't a life science student, I was at a huge disadvantage.
One of the questions required us to list down 4-5 antibiotic resistant bacteria, of which I could only recall Staphylococcus aureus. My groupmates were telling me after the paper that they didn't expect such questions but wrote down according to their life science knowledge. (I guess being a life science student gave my classmates an advantage over people like me lol)
I guess the prof was pretty sly, cos the MCQs had options where answers were very similar which made it hard to eliminate.
Overall comments:
Quite chill for a level 3k mod for lectures (50% of the class doesn't turn up for classes) but group project was time-consuming. Pray you have good group members that are proactive, and pray that the group members and yourself have similar timetables (or else peer review scores will affect your overall grades- try to be present during meetings/ do all the saikang)
Final exams was horrible, was worried I would fail the module, but I guess if you're to take the mod, just study all the small details (some of which are not found in the lecture notes but were mentioned by the lecturers)
You have to remember which diseases are vector-borne diseases, which are zoonotic diseases. Not an easy feat for non-life science students unless you have taken biology in JC before.
Should you take this module?
Life science students- Yes
Non-life science students- Maybe
Depends on whether you have interest in biology/ enjoy memorizing medical terms/ names of bacteria
