A fellowship programme has been set up for doctors from Asia to come to Singapore for advanced training in specialised areas.
A fellowship programme has been set up for doctors from Asia to come to Singapore for advanced training in specialised areas.
Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson will be providing $1 million over three years to fully fund training in four centres for an expected 60 doctors.
The four centres are KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, National Heart Centre, Singapore General Hospital and National University Hospital (NUH).
The doctors will be trained for six to 12 months, depending on the area of specialisation, which can be in heart operations, radiological procedures, or treatment for colorectal cancer, joint and spine problems, and female urinary tract conditions.
Johnson & Johnson Medical Singapore’s general manager Anthony Bishop said the company started the programmes as a way of giving back to the community.
He said they chose to partner institutions here because Singapore’s health care is “world-renowned” and its hospitals provide good conditions for training.
NUH’s chief executive officer Chua Song Khim said the programme would allow the hospital to “fulfil its role as a university hospital and allow our doctors to further hone their own skills through training others”.
Professor Tan Ser Kiat, chief executive officer of SingHealth, which runs the other three institutions, added: “It’s part of our professional code to train other doctors, so there’s no question that we want to help others.”
Building up relationships with trainee doctors will also further Singapore’s goals to become a regional medical centre because many of these doctors will refer complex cases here after they return home, he said.
Yesterday, the first 11 recipients were awarded certificates to mark the start of their fellowships at a dinner ceremony at the Conrad Centennial.
They come from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
One of them, Dr Tarinee Manchana, 33, a gynaecologist from Thailand’s Chualalongkorn Hospital, has already completed four of her six months’ training in urogynaecology.
She said: “I chose to come here because Singapore is very well known internationally for urogynaecology. I also got hands-on training here, which I wouldn’t have had if I had gone to the United States or Australia.
“I’ve learnt a lot of new operations, which I can use to treat patients at home.”
Source: The Straits
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