Speech by Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Health at The Groundbreaking Of The Lee Kong Chian School Of Medicine’s Novena Campus

1. I am pleased to join you this afternoon at the groundbreaking ceremony of the new Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. The establishment of this medical school is a milestone event, and its opening next year will be well-timed to train the doctors needed to care for Singaporeans in the future.

Meeting our Growing Healthcare Demand

2. Singapore’s population has grown by 25 per cent over 10 years and will continue to grow over the next decade. Singaporeans are also ageing rapidly, and by 2030, we expect 1 in 5 Singaporeans to be above the age of 65. To meet the rising healthcare demands from a growing and rapidly-ageing population, we will need to build more healthcare facilities, provide more services, and train more healthcare manpower.

3. To support this increasing healthcare demand, we have invested heavily to grow and develop our pool of doctors. We have expanded our local medical training pipeline with the steady increase in annual intake at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and the opening of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in 2007. We have also been ramping-up our recruitment of qualified overseas-trained Singaporean doctors. The impact of these investments in growing our manpower pipelines has been considerable. Last year, 279 new doctors graduated from our local medical schools, and we brought back 110 overseas-trained Singaporean doctors, doubling the 139 doctors we trained locally just 10 years ago in 2001. That year we brought back just 40 overseas-trained Singaporeans.

4. The Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, with the National Healthcare Group as its primary clinical partner, will play a pivotal role in adding to the capacity to train and develop doctors to meet our healthcare needs in 2020 and beyond.

Training the Future Doctor

5. Our challenge does not end there. Beyond training enough doctors to meet our needs, our medical schools must also train doctors equipped with the skills to care for us in an evolving healthcare landscape.

6. With our ageing population, rising life expectancies and changing lifestyles, chronic diseases and other long term medical conditions will become increasingly prevalent. These conditions will need different care approaches to ensure that patients receive the quality care and attention they need, and at an affordable price. We will also need to better support and empower individuals in managing their own conditions, and ensure that follow up care is easily accessible. Care will therefore be increasingly provided outside of hospitals and in the community.

7. To do so, we must have a healthcare system that operates as an integrated whole to deliver patient-centric care. Just as importantly, we also need to have doctors who are able to navigate this integrated healthcare system to provide
patients with seamless care across the various settings, whether it is in the polyclinics, acute hospitals or long term care facilities.

8. I am glad to know that as part of the curriculum, the LKCSoM medical students will have an opportunity to follow an elderly patient or a patient with a chronic condition over a period of two years, to learn about how these patients live day-to-day, and how they are cared for within the healthcare system. This will develop the students’ empathy towards their patients, and train them to think about the care of patients not only from a systems viewpoint but also from a patient’s view point.

9. The doctors that we train need to be comfortable in stepping beyond their own area of expertise to work in multi-disciplinary care teams with nurses, pharmacists and allied health professionals to treat and manage increasingly complex conditions.

They must be ready to apply their scientific know-how and clinical skills to achieve not just medical excellence, but also to enhance the well-being of patients, and keep our healthcare system cost-effective.

10. They need to be prepared to continuously learn and upgrade their knowledge and skills. With new clinical knowledge constantly being created, and patients becoming more educated, doctors will need to remain humble, help patients
contextualise and understand the relevant information and offer them appropriate advice and treatment.

11. Most importantly, our doctors need to imbibe strong professional ethics and values, put the concern for their patients at the top, and be deeply passionate about healthcare as a career.

Conclusion

12. The journey of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in the Novena Campus will be starting with its first cohort in 2013. With the close support and guidance of Nanyang Technological University, Imperial College London, National Healthcare Group, and the healthcare family, I am confident that the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine will be able to deliver on its mission to produce the sort of doctors whom you and I would wish to have caring for us.

Thank You.