A poster by students from the Faculty of Medicine (FK) of Universitas Indonesia (UI) won first place in the Public Poster category at the international competition Asian Medical Students’ Conference (AMSC) which took place on July 21-27, 2024 in Japan. Allexie Clarissa Johan and Celine Fayola, FKUI students from the class of 2022, presented a poster titled “Motherhood in Crisis: Prioritizing Perinatal Well-being with BLESS,” which discusses the importance of perinatal well-being for mothers and babies with a focus on prevention and intervention efforts during disasters.
Allexie Clarissa Johan said that the idea of raising the topic of perinatal safety is worth highlighting because there is still little research that surveys the condition of perinatal welfare during disasters. “In this topic, we emphasize the importance of making perinatal safety a top priority in disaster management. Care before, during, and after birth is very important because disasters often worsen their health conditions. We are aware of the lack of awareness and perinatal care that often neglects the special needs of pregnant women. Prioritizing perinatal welfare is an important step to ensure the safety of mothers and babies in the long term,” said Allexie.
Meanwhile, Celine Fayola revealed that there are five main components in perinatal that must be considered when facing a disaster situation, namely, readiness to give birth or preparation for giving birth by knowing the nearest medical personnel; life-saving intervention with the use of emergency birth tools; emergency education about signs of labor; a supportive environment, namely support from family and community; and lastly, a safety protocol to prevent infection. These five main components, if abbreviated as BLESS, aim to make the poster more quickly remembered and understood and easy to apply in the community,” said Celine.
Celine also said that the challenge she and Allexie faced in the competition was that their team had to make an interesting presentation to the judges and the audience. “We had to try to make the presentation interesting through a short drama and design some merchandise to be distributed to the audience. Moreover, we had to make sure that the information we wanted to convey was well delivered in a short time, so that the audience could understand it and hopefully the information could be useful in the future,” she said.
The material presented by UI students was specially prepared for the AMSC 2024 competition with several basic concepts that refer to various previous studies. In the process of making it, this poster took about 5 days, starting from the process of making the material, and design, until finally being selected nationally and passing to compete at the international stage.
Meanwhile, another team that was part of the FKUI delegation also won the same competition for the Scientific Poster category. Ananda Pipphali Vidya, Karen Elliora Utama, Jansen Jayadi, and Nicholas Jason Wijaya who are FKUI students from the 2021 batch, and Stefia Aisyah Amini, a student of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Jember, won 2nd place with a topic titled “Leveling Up Triage Accuracy: A Comprehensive Randomized Controlled Trials Meta-Analysis of Game-Based Training Effects on Healthcare Worker’s Disaster Triage Skills”. The work highlights the importance of innovation in triage training or determining patient severity for disaster management for health workers.
“In disaster situations, more than 70% of patients with severe injuries often experience errors in determining the severity of the patient, which significantly increases the risk of death by up to six times. Current conventional triage training can be further developed and improved to improve the accuracy of triage for health workers. To address this issue, a team of FKUI students conducted a quantitative analysis of 767 health workers who participated in game-based triage training,” said Ananda Pipphali Vidya.
The results of the analysis showed that this training can improve the ability to determine patient severity. This game-based triage training is considered an innovative and effective modality to improve the accuracy of triage of health workers in disaster situations.
Another team in the same competition, namely FKUI students from the class of 2023, including Bryan Laurence, Octaviona Kusuma Oei, Joanna Regis, Stephen Dario Syofyan, and Josia Nathanael Wiradikarta, FKUI 2022, won third place in the Scientific Poster category with their work titled “Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy as A Novel Treatment for Improving Memory Recall in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Meta-Analysis.” Bryan Laurence explained that mild brain injury is a disability that is often overlooked, and through this work, they seek to raise awareness of the urgency of its management. Bryan and his friends also discussed the ability of hyperbaric therapy to restore memory in patients with a history of mild brain injury and focused on post-disaster interventions.
“For us, this is the first experience of conducting a meta-analysis study. The challenge we feel from this study is the difficulty of the practicality of hyperbaric therapy in post-disaster conditions so assistance is needed from both institutions and the government. This experience provides a very valuable lesson for us,” said Bryan.
Acting Dean of FKUI, Prof. Dr. dr. Dwiana Ocviyanti, SpOG(K), MPH who is familiarly called Prof. Ovy also gave a positive response regarding this achievement. “We are happy and proud of our students who have a high spirit of learning and competition. This achievement will certainly add to their experience and competence and also improve the quality of FKUI. The topics presented are very relevant to the current situation so that of course they can also be applied to daily practice,” said Prof. Ovy
AMSC 2024 is an annual activity organized by the international medical student organization Asian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA). This activity aims to bring together medical students from various countries in Asia to share knowledge, discuss global health issues, and present their research. AMSC includes a variety of academic competitions, workshops, seminars, and scientific poster sessions, all designed to enhance participants’ knowledge and skills in the field of medicine.
