When asked to share about his own personal experience as a learner, Associate Professor Tan Hak Koon said that he was very thankful for the training and guidance he received from the older generations of doctors more than 20 years ago.

Prof Tan who is also SGH’s Associate Designated Official, SingHealth Residency, and the Academic Vice-Chair for the SingHealth Duke-NUS Obstetrics & Gynaecology Academic Clinical Programme added, “Although the training we received then was less structured and supported by far fewer resources than there is now, there was a sense of urgency to ensure that the younger generation would be more skilled than before. It is this spirit that continually motivates us to achieve clinical excellence and better patient care.”

To Prof Tan, educators and learners alike need to keep learning.   This biennial conference provides the ideal platform to bring together educators, professionals and trainees from SingHealth, Duke-NUS, as well as other healthcare and academic institutions to learn and exchange best practices in healthcare education.

“The conference focuses on equipping our educators with new ways to teach, assess and share knowledge.   The programme includes a dynamic line-up of international and local speakers, and focuses on enhancing educators’ teaching competencies across the continuum, from undergraduate, postgraduate to continuing professional development, hence the theme ‘Education Across the Continuum for Improved Healthcare’,” said Prof Tan.

This biennial conference provides the ideal platform to bring together educators, professionals and trainees to learn and exchange best practices in healthcare education.

Co-chairing the organising committee is Associate Professor Sandy Cook.

Prof Cook, Chief Pedagogy of AM•EI and Duke-NUS’ Senior Associate Dean, Education, shared that the committee adopted a grassroots approach to reach out to educators to find their areas of interest to develop a programme that addresses educators’ concerns.

From the feedback received, the programme will cover eight key education domains ranging from assessment and feedback, career, education research, leadership, pedagogy, technology, simulation to recruitment and retention.

“We want to highlight how very important medical education is and how it has evolved over the years. Instead of picking a typical conference theme under one discipline, we chose a unique combination of broad educational principles with an inter-professional focus ,” said Prof Cook. 

In addition, Prof Cook highlighted that there will be a special pedagogical emphasis on Team-Based Learning, to highlight the learning strategy that Duke-NUS is known for.

Prof Cook shared that there is potential for the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre to grow education research to improve educational standards and the quality of teaching.

At the conference this year, educators or learners with an interest in educational research can look forward to hearing from experienced researchers from both the healthcare and academic institutions on key conceptual framework and tips on getting your research work published. 

“We want invite more conversation with educators who have done clinical research to see the similarities and know about the support for doing educational research. To do this, we are organising workshops on writing education conference abstracts and presenting findings,” added Prof Cook.

“AM•EI is also always on hand to provide consultation support for educators who need help in education research.”

Educators or learners with an interest in educational research can look forward to hearing from experienced researchers on key conceptual framework and tips on getting your research work published.

This year’s conference comes on the heels of the successful inaugural education conference held in 2013 which attracted more than 1,000 healthcare educators and Residents from SingHealth, Duke-NUS, as well as other public and private healthcare institutions. 


About the conference
Date: 25 and 26 September 2015
Venue: Academia
Theme: Education Across the Continuum for Improved Healthcare

Conference Highlights:

• An exciting programme line-up with international and local speakers, including 7 innovative teaching pre- and post-conference workshops and events, and 17 plenary sessions and tracks covering a wide-range of topics such as Education Research, Pedagogy and Team Based Learning, Technology, Simulation and many more

• Keynote lecture by renowned medical educator Professor Robert Baron, who will share on education across the continuum from his perspective as Associate Dean of Graduate and Continuing Medical Education, University of California, San Francisco

• Annual AM•EI Golden Apple Awards ceremony with new award categories to honour the best in healthcare education