Dear Editor, Medical school can be a stressful experience for students, with burnout being increasingly common.1 Stressors in medical education include a heavy academic workload, pressure of good academic performance, and comparison with peers of high aptitude.2 Stress can be either beneficial or detrimental to development, depending on personal regulation...

Dear Editor, An 80-hour duty limit for residents was first introduced by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in 2003, with the further addition of a 16-hour continuous duty period limit for first-year residents in 2011. Prior studies1 have demonstrated an association between longer working hours and...

Dear Editor, The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in many changes to medical education, including the site and mode of teaching, conducting of examinations and a shift towards prioritising the mastery of clinical skills relevant to infection control. Hence, Ng et al.’s suggestions on how to maximise learning...

A physician’s education in medical science represents a continuum of several interrelated phases. It starts with medical school, passes through brief housemanship year, and continues throughout the professional career. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download PDF” on top to view the full article.

The tutor plays a key role in fostering the collaborative and self-directed learning that is central to problem-based learning (PBL). It is reasonable, therefore, for the tutor to be involved in assessing the processes of collaborative learning. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download PDF”...

Many medical schools worldwide have made the shift toward problem-based learning (PBL) medical education. Some of them employ these new techniques in only part of their teaching, and usually in the pre-clinical phases, to make basic sciences easier and more attractive. This article is available only as a PDF. Please...

Since the pioneering adoption of problem-based learning (PBL) by McMaster University in medical education more than three decades ago, increasingly more medical schools around the globe have been undergoing curriculum restructuring by incorporating some forms of PBL philosophy into their new curriculum. Some schools have believed and trusted in...

Dear Editor, The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted medical education1,2 and distressed clinicians.3,4 Understanding the impact of this pandemic on emergency medicine (EM) residents’ experience of stress will allow for more effective interventions to aid residents, while reducing attrition and its impact on pandemic response. We present our qualitative study, guided by...

These are challenging times for medical schools as the frontiers of knowledge have expanded enormously and rapidly in recent years. In order to keep up with the expanding knowledge and to impart it effectively and efficiently to our students, we as medical teachers will have to adopt new changes...

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centred, self-directed, integrated and contextual mode of learning. It has been widely perceived by many to confer advantages in promoting critical thinking, retention of knowledge, independent learning and interpersonal skills. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download PDF” on top...

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of the best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” Considering the vast amount of medical knowledge available today through various media outlets with almost no boundaries, it is essential that our medical graduates should have...

Healthcare delivery systems worldwide are currently undergoing significant changes to create resilient learning organisations that are able to adapt with ever-increasing speed to shifting business, regulatory, and competitive environments. The delivery of healthcare is no longer a single-provider responsibility; modern group practice organisations require a physician to be not...

Medical education is a lifelong learning process. Just as we remind our students and ourselves that the practice of medicine is a lifelong process in which we continually seek to improve our knowledge so that we give our patients the most effective care, so too with medical education. This article...

An important aspect of problem-based learning (PBL), particularly in the early years of the undergraduate medical, physiotherapy, nursing and dental courses, is teaching basic science in a clinical format.1,2 This approach should enhance students’ skills to develop reasoning strategies, use information in relevant situations, generate hypotheses for problems identified...

There were 2 questions which initiated this research. One became the title of this paper; the other was a concern that the integration of competencies into existing assessment practices could jeopardise the high standards required of trainees before they graduate as independent practitioners. This article is available only as a...

Society supports medical schools expecting them to produce physicians who can improve both the health of the population as well as the health system itself. This goal has not been achieved yet; deaths from tuberculosis (1.7 million, 2006) are but one of many examples that points to that failure...

In Asia, the challenges facing medical education are similar across different countries. The learning process is still problematic with large classes, and most of the curriculum time being spent on traditional lectures. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download PDF” on top to view the...

This is a proud year for the medical profession in Singapore, as we celebrate 100 years of medical education. As the oldest faculty in Singapore’s first university, we are reminded that it was the Medical School which laid the foundation for tertiary education in Singapore. It is appropriate that...

The MBBS-PhD programme is a significant milestone in medical education in Singapore. In July 2000, the Faculty of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS) launched this programme in collaboration with the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), with support from the Economic Development Board (EDB), and the Agency...

On 3 July 1905, the Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School was started with the objective of training the local men and women to become Assistant Surgeons and General Practitioners. After a petition set out by the Chinese and non-European communities to the then Governor of the...

The medical faculty in the National University of Singapore was started in 1905 and a Chair in Biochemistry established in 1927. Biochemistry was taught only to medical and dental students until 1960, when a degree course in Biochemistry was introduced under the Faculty of Science. This article is available only...

When the Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School opened its doors on 3 July 1905 in what was to be the historical beginning of medical education in the region, 16 young persons presented themselves for the full 5-year course that would lead, on successful completion, to their...

The Medical School in Singapore was founded on 3 July 1905; it was named the Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School. It was the forerunner of the Faculty of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS). This year (2005), the Faculty of Medicine (NUS) and the NUS celebrate...

1905: The Medical School started off in an old female lunatic asylum on the site of the general hospital at Sepoy Lines.1 Called the Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, it was founded on 3 July 1905. The official launch was on Thursday, 28 September 1905. The...

More than 600,000 new citations were published in MEDLINE in 2005; this raised the total number of indexed citations to more than 14 million citations. In a study be Williamson et al, 2 out of 3 primary care physicians described the volume of literature as unmanageable, and 1 out...

The core of the Family Medicine (FM) vision is patient-centred care, requiring specific education and vocational training. Modern day FM began its existence as a “counterculture” to the disease-and-body-part focus of the hospital specialties in the 1960s. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download PDF”...

Over the last 3 decades, the rate of knowledge accumulation in drug development has been enhanced by advances in molecular modelling, the molecular genetics of drug action and the screening from natural sources for novel therapeutic agents. These advances mandate the need for a more adaptive and responsive educational...

Medical students today are taught in a competitive environment that fosters the acquisition of knowledge and individual responsibility. However, in recent times, the importance of teaching students to give patient-centred care, work in interdisciplinary teams, employ evidence-based practice, apply quality improvement methods and utilise informatics has come to the...

Continuing medical education (CME) plays an indispensable role in the clinical practice of any doctor. The practice of evidence-based medicine today,1 or any meaningful learning per se, requires at least appropriate access to relevant updated medical information. However, the acquisition of such relevant medical knowledge can prove difficult and...

Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of the medical education strategies to promote continuous active and self-directed learning.1,2 Our medical school implemented PBL in 1990 and currently there are 800 PBL graduates who are practising physicians. Studies have shown that PBL can change learning attitudes among undergraduate students3- 5 but...

Although pandemics of influenza have occurred (albeit rarely, i.e. once every few decades) for more than 3 centuries, recent outbreaks of H1N1 and H5N1 influenza1 and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),2 have necessitated the institution of such measures as school closure and mandatory quarantine of cases1 in a...

Experiential learning brings medical students out of the comfort zone of learning in their classrooms to acquire and apply knowledge and skills in an immediate and relevant setting. By linking theory and practice, experiential education differs from the traditional education in that it actively engages students in experiences that...

Knowledge and skills of evidence-based medicine (EBM) can be taught by many methods, such as role modeling evidence-based care, using evidence for clinical medicine instruction, and teaching specific EBM skills. Standalone courses and workshops away from the clinical environment are usually the traditional educational designs for teachers to convey...

The field of medicine is complex. Its interwoven structure of clinical practice, medical education and biomedical research, coupled with intricacies of the health system, makes it challenging for one to navigate through without any help. In any academic medical centre (AMC) or hospital, there is an imperative for senior,...

In 2010, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) and Singapore Healthcare Services (SingHealth) launched an initiative to improve the lives of patients by combining their individual strengths to become an integrated academic healthcare cluster. This new academic healthcare cluster has a mission to provide outstanding clinical service, discover and promote...

Role modeling has been reported as an increasingly prominent teaching need and strategy in the field of medical education. This aspect of training helps novice doctors to imbibe key values, attitudes, behaviours and ethics that define the medical profession. With the primary goal of medical education being to train...