New way of thinking

Second medical school aims to groom clinician-scientists
05:55 AM Sep 29, 2009
by Neo Chai Chin

IN 2011, when the first batch of students from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (GMS) graduates, patients will likely see more doctors equally skilled in bedside manners and laboratory work – doctors with the human touch, who also act as bridges between the basic sciences and clinical medicine, or “bench to bedside”.

By then, Singapore could also be on its way to leading research in cancer and infectious diseases, among other areas.

Besides growing Singapore’s pool of doctors, these, in a nutshell, are the hopes of the GMS, which has surpassed its own expectations since it started in 2005 as a collaboration between Duke University in the United States and the National University of Singapore. The school aims to take in about 50 new students a year, although this year’s strong applicant pool led to an intake of 56 – one-fifth that of the undergraduate Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

And instead of three signature research programmes originally intended, five have been established.

While the GMS is not the “main model for medical education in Singapore”, it has “stimulated new thinking about how to approach clinical training and postgraduate medical education”, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday at its official opening.

The GMS campus, named the Khoo Teck Puat Building after the late philanthropist – whose estate donated $80 million in Jan 2007 – was also inaugurated yesterday.

GMS students partake in team-based learning in groups of about eight, and start their clinical training at healthcare institutions in their second year. This contrasts with the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, where students do problem-based learning and begin their clinical practice from Year Three.

In time, “some friendly rivalry between our two medical schools is to be expected, and – dare I say – even to be encouraged”, Mr Lee said in his speech.

But NUS president Tan Chorh Chuan said both schools draw from different talent pools and complement each other. The undergraduate medical school has “looked with a lot of interest to team-based learning” done at the GMS, and both schools are collaborating on health services research, he said.
URL http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC090929-0000083/New-way-of-thinking

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