Duke-NUS - Admissions Blog

Interestingly, about one third of our student population hold a Bachelor's degree in Engineering. One of our success stories, Dr Lim Kheng Choon, was a Mechanical Engineer in the Republic of Singapore Air Force before he joined us as a medical student at Duke-NUS. To futher spur on these group of "engineers turned medical students", an interest group MedTech has also been set up at Duke-NUS. In this blog post, we talk to Eric Cher, a current 2nd year student about his journey from engineering to medicine thus far.

Year Two After a year of TeamLEAD sessions in the classroom, the second year Dukies will be released into the real world. It might seem exciting to some and scary to others, but it is definitely an experience that is unique to the life of a medical student. One way to think about this experience might be to compare it with the concept in the olden days of an apprentice, where the young disciple learns first-hand from his master how things are done, and at times even tries his hand at some tasks. Modern day learning is more structured. The ward learning experience is broadly divided into six specialties, each lasting four to eight weeks, called clerkships. The schedule differs slightly across different clerkships but generally speaking, the student attends and even participates in morning rounds, specialist clinics, and specialized procedures, if any. This is supplemented with specialised teaching sessions in the wards, like bedside tutorials. Through these, the student should be able to pick up skills in examining and communicating with a patient, to read signs and obtain necessary information to make diagnoses and plans for the patient. Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships