The 2015 Singapore Healthcare Quality Service Awards honoured a record number of 2,748 healthcare professionals from across 19 institutions nation-wide.
In mere minutes, a video posted of Dr Tan Ju Le on the SingHealth Facebook has garnered a slew of likes and shares. The winner of the Singapore Healthcare Quality Service Clinician Superstar Award 2015 is indeed well-loved.
An Adjunct Assistant Professor and Senior Consultant with the Department of Cardiology, and the Director of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) programme at NHCS, Dr Tan was inspired in her teens to transpose a passion for science into a career in medicine. Today, she takes a proactive stance to pass on the torch by engaging medical students as a clinician educator.
Combining physiology, anatomy and clinical presentation of congenital heart conditions, Dr Tan hopes to spark off her students’ curiosity about congenital heart disease by starting with the basics.
“All of us are educators because you have to teach what you know to the upcoming generations. Teaching is part of my responsibility as a clinician so at some point I can pass the baton on.
“Medical students are the next generation of doctors and must be trained well to look after future patients. ACHD is a new cardiology sub-specialty and can be quite intimidating, so I want to teach the basic principles of congenital heart disease and make the subject interesting while encouraging students to question,” she said.
“My greatest takeaways and recognition as an educator are the feedback from the patients that they understand their illnesses, and then from doctors, who have experienced satisfaction through interaction with patients for better medical outcomes. I can't ask for anything more."
Dr Tan also reaches out personally to patients, at times linking patients up with employment opportunities, allowing them a sense of responsibility, self-worth and pride despite their illness. She routinely discusses procedures and test results with patients and family members, consciously going beyond impersonal medical team huddles around computers and test results.
In demonstrating by example, Dr Tan hopes to drive home that a good doctor should provide holistic care to patients.
“Medical students have to receive lessons in the social aspects of doctoring, and patients have to understand their illnesses more to help generate a greater interest and ownership over their conditions to help them on the healing journey,” Dr Tan shared.
“My greatest takeaways and recognition as an educator are the feedback from the patients that they understand their illnesses, and then from doctors, who have experienced satisfaction through interaction with patients for better medical outcomes. I can't ask for anything more.”
The 2015 Singapore Healthcare Quality Service Awards honoured a record number of 2,748 healthcare professionals from across 19 institutions nation-wide. Organised by the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre, the award is Singapore's first dedicated platform to recognise healthcare professionals who have delivered quality care and excellent service to patients.
Visit the SingHealth Facebook to see photos from the award ceremony held on 16 January 2015.
