By: Lyna Mohamad
On: 16 April 2017
A GROUP of 17 second year medicine students from the Pengiran Anak Puteri Rashidah Sa’adatul Bolkiah (PAPRSB) Institute of Health Sciences (IHS) Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), are currently visiting NGO centres as part of their assignments for the semester.
The students visited the SMARTER Brunei’s Autism Centre for Adults (BACA) in Sungai Hanching and SMARTER Brunei’s Early Development Growth and Enabling (EDGE) Centre in Kampong Mata-Mata Gadong yesterday.
Leading the students in the project was Soon Jian Jun who noted that usually when they do their cases they do it by system and this week they are doing Autism where their project leader wants them to understand the autism community and to observe how things are working, how they are taught, educated and how they cope with their daily life.
“Our visits are mostly to get to know how they manage and how they ate treated and see things from their perspective because SMARTER Brunei President Malai Haji Abdullah bin Malai Haji Othman gave us a perspective on how children with autism see the world and the need of us to put ourselves in their shoes and see how things go on in their minds.”
Yesterday’s visit is related to one of the topics in the health science module and the students will be doing more visits in the coming week to learn about Cystic Fibrosis as well as gynecological, neurological and Paediatric diseases.
During the visit yesterday, the students had the opportunity to observe autistic children engaged in their routine development activities under the supervision of staff members at the centre and also had a brief tour of the facilities.
SMARTER Brunei currently has 113 students at its centres with 56 of the students at EDGE centre where it emphasises on the welcoming, inviting, supporting and encouraging (WISE) approach and not the command, demand or disciplining approach.