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By Prof Wong Tien Yin
Medical Director, Singapore National Eye Centre
Professor and Vice Dean, Office of Clinical Sciences, Duke-NUS
Group Director, Research, SingHealth

Prof Arthur Lim was an inspiration.

I remember very clearly my first meeting with him 20 years ago when I was asked to meet him at the newly setup SNEC.

At that time, as a young first-year medical student working in a polyclinic, I was still undecided as to which medical career path to take.   I was neither strongly inclined towards Ophthalmology nor prepared to be considered a competitive candidate for Ophthalmology residency.   Yet upon my first meeting with Prof Lim, his raw energy and sense of mission made me accept his invitation to join him in realising his grand vision for Ophthalmology in Singapore.

As a young resident, two of the most memorable aspects of training at SNEC were an overarching sense of perfection and fear of not meeting his exacting standard.   Everyone was expected to be present and punctual for the professor’s teaching round.   We prepared our cases as if they were for our final examinations.   There was little room for mistakes.  Prof Lim used to remind us that “a patient’s eye is not for experimentation”, and he introduced many of the quality control processes and audit that are now considered routine in our hospitals.

Prof Lim was tough, demanding and unforgiving.   He was like Alex Ferguson in the way he extracted the best from his team.   Prof Lim was also a polarising figure who had detractors such as those who did not agree with his policy and methods.

For example, there was unhappiness that a new breakthrough technique in cataract surgery (phacoemulsification) was introduced in SNEC almost a decade after it had been widely practised in US and other parts of Asia.   However, to Prof Lim, a conservative and proven approach to surgery was important, as emphasised in his motto, “A patient’s eye is not for experimentation”.

Many of the best medical students were attracted to Ophthalmology in their early years because of his leadership and charisma.   Many of them, like Donald Tan (past Medical Director of SNEC) and Ang Chong Lye (CEO of SGH), have given a quarter of a century to public service in SNEC, the National University of Singapore, and Ophthalmology.

Most of all, Prof Lim provided a vision for the future that would be fulfilled years later.   In 1997, years before biomedical research took off in Singapore and before the conceptualisation of academic medical centres, Prof Lim saw the need for an academic environment in SNEC and formed SERI. He also started a trend of nurturing clinician-scientists and a group of MD-PhDs.

SERI is now recognised as a global centre of excellence in eye research. Singapore Medicine in general, Ophthalmology in particular, has indeed benefited from Prof Lim’s legacy.

Professor Arthur Lim, third from right, at the launch of the Arthur Lim Professorship in Ophthalmology Full version of this tribute was published in SMA News February 2014

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