New University Health Service Building Is Bigger and Better

The new medical centre at Nanyang Avenue, which officially opened on 9 Sep, contains newer medical equipment, and consolidates medical and counselling services for the convenience of students and staff.

By Chong Yoke Ming, Saranya Mahendran

ONE-STOP FACILITY: The new University Health Service Building brings medical and counselling services together under one roof.
PHOTO: LIEW YU WEI

The new University Health Service (UHS) Building built to replace the Medical Clinic is now a one-stop medical facility for NTU students and staff.

It can also accommodate 60 patients now — a 50 per cent increase from the former clinic, located at the South Spine beside Lee Kong Chian Lecture Theatre, which could only accommodate 40 patients.

Now located at Nanyang Avenue, the 600 square feet centre — which replaces the International House — brings the medical, dental, and X-ray clinics, Employee Wellbeing Centre, and Student Wellbeing Centre under one roof, so that students and staff need not visit multiple centres for different medical needs. It will continue to be operated by the Fullerton Healthcare Group.

The UHS also boasts a new health exhibition area and a pandemic quarantine area for times of disease outbreaks.

With effect from this semester, there will be a new consultation fee of S$3 per visit for the first 10 visits per academic year. The fee for the 11th visit onwards will be waived. Previously, consultation was free of charge.

Students also now pay a yearly Student Health Service Fee of $53.50 — down from $64.20 previously — under the new NTU Medical Coverage Scheme.

NTU President, Professor Bertil Andersson, who spoke at the official opening ceremony on 9 Sep, emphasised the importance of the UHS, given the large number of people on campus.

“There are 40,000 people working (and studying) here. That is quite sizeable, like a small town in Europe or the United States. If you think of such towns, you know having a facility like the one we had at South Spine is not very impressive,”

“(The old facility) was not very functional and not very cosy,” said Prof Andersson.

UHS staff said that the new medical facilities would provide more benefits to students and staff.

“This might be a retrofitted building but everything inside is definitely brand new. It serves as a one-stop medical facility for the students and acts just like a mini hospital,” said Chief Medical Officer Dr Calvin Tan.

The UHS has its own X-ray machines, including a dental X-ray, a chest X-ray and a Digital Radiography (DR) full-body X-ray machine. The DR machine is the first of its kind in Singapore.

Senior radiographer Nurhuda Salim said: “The DR system takes a maximum of three minutes for each scan. This will allow us to instantly diagnose a patient’s problems, and the new facilities will allow us to do up to 200 X-rays daily.”

Previously, the old Medical Clinic had a mobile chest X-ray machine which utilised conventional radiography. Each scan took up to 10 minutes to complete.

Despite the increased efficiency, another UHS employee said that staff had to work longer due to an increase in patient numbers.

Clinic supervisor Thng Li Lian said: “We had a large number of students coming in after we had the new building. We had so many patients, we couldn’t even close for lunch.”

Students had mixed reactions towards the new UHS.

Zuo Peng, 26, a postgraduate student from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, felt that the new facilities were “beautiful and clean”.

“As a patient, I would feel a lot better coming here (rather than the old Medical Clinic) to be treated,” he said.

But Zhao Xi Jun, 20, a first-year student from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, had gripes about the long waiting time.

“I am here because I have a headache. And I’ve been waiting for about an hour. My (appointment) number is 80, but people with numbers beyond 100 have been called first,” she said.

While Jair Zhou, 31, a postgraduate student from the School of Computer Engineering did not mind the waiting time, he noted that the registration queue could be more clearly indicated.

“I’ve been waiting 20 minutes so far for my employment checkup review, but I’m not picky about waiting,”

“The staff are friendly (and) approachable, but the registration is a bit messy as there is no (prominent) queue line,” he said.