PHP Helping Professions Career Day

On 26 August 2019, we had the honor of having 4 guest speakers from the helping profession to share their life stories and career paths with us. They are Ms Dawn Chia, Dr Lim Wei Shyan, Mr Zheng Liren and Mr Larry Lee. If you had missed the opportunity to join us on 26 August, fret not because PHP is here to give you some insights on what the speakers have shared with us !

About our speakers :

Ms Dawn Chia is currently a Psychologist at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. She has always been keen to help children at a young age to break inter-generational trauma and create healthy changes within the family unit. She previously worked in the Ministry of Social and Family Development Singapore, mainly dealing with child protection and trauma cases.

Dr Lim Wei Shyan is a Psychiatrist at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital as well. As an alumnus of RI he always felt like working in the public service sector back when he was in Y1-4. However, he decided to study civil engineering. Upon graduation, he started work in the civil service. Soon after, he left the civil service to master bio-engineering in the United States. Upon completion of Medicine School, he trained as a specialist to become a Psychiatrist.

Mr Zheng Liren works as a lecturer for the Social Work Programme in Nanyang Polytechnic. He was always interested in helping other people and wanting to make positive changes in the society. He trained as a social worker and did extensive volunteer work both locally and overseas. He has practiced as a counselor and as a social worker in community-based family services, helping families deal with crisis and mental health development.

Mr Larry Lee is a current teacher-counselor at Raffles Institution. In the early days of his career, he mainly dealt with disciplinary issues in Secondary Schools. He then proceeded to handle various counselling cases which is now his full time career today.

Question and Answer Segment :

Q : What are the most enjoyable and least enjoyable parts of your career as a helping professional ?

A(Dr Lim): Seeing people get better and their journey to coping along with their resilience is my most enjoyable moment. However, I do have very long working hours that make work less enjoyable.

A(Ms Chia): The most enjoyable for me is seeing small shifts in patients and how they become more resilient coming from bad backgrounds and also hearing stories from survivors. Advertisement A(Mr Zheng):The ability to connect with my clients and also seeing my patients grow and change successfully are my million dollar moments. The least enjoyable for me is dealing with suicide cases, domestic violence and mental health crisis. Q : How would you describe a typical work day ? A(Mr Zheng): Having to do many paperwork and procedures such as sorting out financial assistance for children. A(Dr Lim): Mostly having direct contact with patients during clinical work and sometimes giving mental health talks to corporations and schools.

A(Ms Chia): Adding on to what Dr Lim said, I usually spend time documenting risk issues, quality improvement projects and start up services.

A(Mr Lee): Having to meet students’ parents regarding counselling cases, dealing with discipline cases that have been passed to counselling, case recording, and my last two hours spent counselling students, mainly in social emotional areas.

Q : How do you deal with burn outs when clients emotions rub off you sometimes ?

A(Mr Lee): I usually go for a run in the park and do some meditation. The support I get from my wife is also really helpful.

A(Ms Chia): One thing I found helpful was knowing my triggers, pre empting the stresses that get to me at times and the type of clients that push my boundaries. I try to understand why they are the way they are and also engage in cognitive reframing with patients such as thinking ” this client is here to teach me patience and this is nothing personal. It is only going to help me grow as a person “. Social support is a huge protective factor. Institute for Healthcare Improvement talks abt strategies to deal with burn outs such as a good working environment that is supportive and can be trusted. Maintaining and building relationships out of work also helps.

A(Mr Zheng): Know your symptoms of burn out such as depersonalisation. Going for your own therapy also helps. I often have trauma symptoms after dealing with suicide cases and feel lethargic so I decide to go for therapy and see my supervisor at work to talk about my process and feelings and my symptoms disappear after 2 hours. Don’t hesitate to get emotional support and get that space for yourself.

A(Dr Lim): It is important to know where to draw a line and maintaining a boundary between you and your clients.

Q : Did u consider other professions before your current helping profession or did you know what you wanted to do from the start ?

A(Ms Chia): I never thought about studying psychology and I always grew up wanting to be a lawyer. Sometimes there are certain ideas about what we want to do when we grow up which can be formed from our environment. I think it’s important to have an open mind and be open to different career options. Think about your values and what is most important to you at the end of your career – is it money, relationships etc and also your passion and needs.

A(Dr Lim): I initially wanted to become an engineer. After my bond with the civil service, I went to med school and was interested in studying psychiatry. Don’t put too much pressure on finding a job that you’ll stick to for the rest of your life.

A(Mr Lee): Being in teaching allowed me to connect with different people. As I was posted to different Secondary Schools and then Junior College I had different experiences and thus realised that as I talked to more students and had the ability to connect with them in different situations I was motivated to adopt teacher-counsellor as a Full Time career.

Q: What are the most important traits for people who want to enter the helping profession ?

A(Mr Lee): Discipline and having the ability to inculcate it into others.

A(Ms Chia): Curiosity and willingness to have the people to people interaction. You don’t really have to be an extrovert. With an interest and heart to help people and if you find such voluntary work enjoyable and rewarding then this line of work is worth considering.

A(Mr Zheng): For me, I think to be a good social worker, you need to have a little bit of anger as well. When you want some sense of equality and social justice you need to question what will help improve the current situation. Having the comfort to work with people from different backgrounds such as different languages your client speaks is also essential.

A(Dr Lim): If you really want to become a medical professional you’ll need a lot of memory space and be prepared to get off your high horses and get your hands dirty. Advertisements Q: How do you deal with people that do not want to get help ?

A(Mr Lee): Sometimes making a change involves many significant risks such as family involvement. Clients may be unwilling to make the change. Unless a person is in great danger such as abuse, it is difficult to have them open up. Allowing all the different counseling approaches have small impacts in various areas may help them.

A(Ms Chia): I believe it is really an autonomy and everyone has a choice. However, when they are already coming to talk to you, the resistance to change could be due the fact that change is more burdensome to make rather than their current situation. I already consider it a privilege that they have come to speak to us.

A(Mr Zheng): In social work the most important thing is to start where they are. You can’t help if they don’t want to be helped. I find it most useful to connect to the feelings and empathise with the struggles their going through which can open doors to getting them help.

A(Dr Lim): In a helping profession you are not expected to help everyone that comes to you. The person that you are helping may end up finding help from someone else. It is important to not press on it and accept that someone else could be a better match to help this person.

Q : What is the difference between a psychologist and psychiatrist ?

A(Ms Chia): Psychiatrist are doctors that can prescribe drugs and give MCs but for myself I can only give time sheets to patients etc. For Singapore, to be a psychologist, having an undergraduate degree in any module and full post doctoral programme in psychology is important.

A(Dr Lim): Adding on to Ms Chia, my time slots with patients are very short as I don’t dive deep into the personal issues but everything is rather straightforward. For psychiatry you would go to Medical School for about 5 years in undergraduate courses. After that you have to serve a bond and move on to training as a specialist for 4-6 years, after which you take residency examinations to be eligible.

We hope you have learnt more about the various helping professions and career options through the insights offered in this article. If you have any queries feel free to leave any questions you have in the comments section below!