Ministry of Health (MOH) has announced that from May 2010, postgraduate medical education will be enhanced to allow them to choose a medical specialty right after graduation. The current 5th year medicine students at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine will be the first batch of students to apply to the public hospitals within this month.
The proposed enhancements will enable Singapore to educate a larger number of specialists and family physicians to meet the nation's healthcare needs. Singapore's ageing population with its associated increase in chronic diseases, advances in healthcare and rising patient expectations have led to a need to increase manpower capacity and capability in both the public and private healthcare sectors. Senior doctors will have the satisfaction of relating to younger doctors as effective teachers and, in the process, rejuvenate the mentoring and learning culture of our healthcare institutions.
For a start, seven medical specialties such as Emergency Medicine, General Surgery ,Internal Medicine, Paediatrics, Pathology , Preventive Medicine, Psychiatry and Transitional Year will be included next year.
MOH and the Specialists Accreditation Board (SAB) have studied the postgraduate training systems of Australia, USA, UK, and Europe. There is a consistent trend towards more structured and formative training in these countries. While the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is assisting with the revamp, this does not mean that the current system will be abandoned entirely for the US system. The new system will bring better and more focused training results to doctors in their first year of the residency program.
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