Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur highlights the importance of medical research, employee engagement programmes

This comes as the hospital bags two wins at the Malaysia Management Excellence Awards 2022.

Having been built from scratch in 2020, Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur’s (PHKL) clinical research team has always worked hand-in-hand to assist in and coordinate clinical trials that aim to improve patient health outcomes through innovative clinical research. Led by its clinical research manager Dr Wong Shin Yee, the clinical research team boasts a team of six who work closely together to conduct and manage the operations of the trials.

With a dedicated clinical research centre based in the hospital, the team works tirelessly to ensure all running operations are smooth, with only one goal in mind: better outcomes for patients.

PHKL’s clinical trials and research publications have made a mark in the international arena after being published in The Lancet peer-reviewed medical journal in 2020, as well as the Clinical Cancer Research and New England Journal of Medicine in 2022. These highly prestigious medical journals are an opportunity to showcase the clinical research team and the hospital’s expertise.

With the tremendous amount of joint effort from the team, the number of clinical trials conducted in PHKL showed significant growth from only nine active trials in 2020 to 26 active recruiting trials within two years. The team even managed to obtain the National Pharmaceutical and Regulatory Agency (NPRA) approval, which further solidified the quality control of the trials.

Moreover, a virtual platform was developed by the team for the recruitment of volunteers for clinical trials, and to raise awareness of the importance of medical research.

The microsite aims to ensure that a complete view of research is available to the public. Patients can explore and view the trials that they are suitable for and learn more about other available modalities of treatments.

The stellar work of PHKL’s clinical research team has been recognised by the Malaysia Management Excellence Awards, as the hospital wins the Team of the Year - Healthcare award.

Meanwhile, it has also organised employee engagement programmes in line with one of its core values, teamwork. Amongst such initiatives are the ‘Chat with CEO’ and the ‘Watch Our Weight’ (WOW) programmes.

The Chat with CEO initiative, which started in 2018, aims for employees to spend time with the hospital’s CEO and to highlight their experiences. It hopes to reduce the gap between the top management and employees. 

Whilst, the WOW programme aims to address the prevalence of obesity in Malaysia starting with the hospital workforce. Such an issue is what the company deems as one of the most common and expensive risk factors related to medical costs. PHKL targeted staff health behaviour in a well-designed worksite health promotion and intervention programme that consisted of three phases.

“Research has shown that employees’ health status directly influences work behaviour, attendance, and job performance,” the company mentioned.

The effectiveness of the health and nutrition workshops was shown by the significant improvement in nutrition knowledge scores and higher efficacy levels in resisting eating in certain situations.

These activities, amongst others, brought recognition to PHKL as they received the Employee Engagement of the Year - Healthcare in the aforementioned awards programme.

The prestigious awards programme honours Malaysia's most outstanding leaders, innovators, and teams whose initiatives have brought tangible business results for the success of their respective companies. It also highlights employee engagement and COVID management activities that made beneficial impacts on the workforce or customers.

The Malaysia Management Excellence Awards is presented by Singapore Business Review Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2023 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's employee engagements and management initiatives, please contact Danica Avila at [email protected].