The Little Things That Matter

By Dr Andrew Chou, MD 2015

After four years of medical school, I am now a resident in Orthopaedic Surgery at SingHealth. The foot and ankle service team at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH), treats and operates on patients facing foot and ankle disorders, such as sports injuries, fractures, and degenerative conditions.

Like every other resident, the work hours can be really long. Like, really long. I once worked three night calls in a row within a week, which was probably not the smartest decision I have ever made. After working as a

junior doctor, you come to realise that there is always more work to be done. While we should always strive to do the best for our patients, I have come to realise that we should also not neglect taking care of ourselves, spending time with family and friends, pursuing our personal interests or just catching up on sleep. Besides, if the number of post-grad exams you are required to pass is any indication, Medicine is a lot more of a marathon than a sprint and it is all too easy to burn out early on.

The reality of life as junior doctor got me thinking - as fully qualified and licensed doctors, we now have ridiculously busy clinical duties, close to zero room for errors, and our patients trust us to have their best interests at heart. Yet, despite busy schedules, lack of sleep, and countless other responsibilities, some of the best teachers I had in medical school were the freshly graduated house officers who took the time to teach me. With this in mind, Dr Petty Chen and I developed the Resident Mentorship Programme, which we hope to formally roll out soon.

Having walked in their shoes, we Duke-NUS alumni are in a better position to teach the Duke-NUS students in the wards in ways that relate to them better. However, heavy clinical workloads and the lack of a proper mentoring structure can make it frustratingly difficult to do so. The new Resident Mentorship Programme aims to provide the infrastructure required and give due credit to these unsung heroes who play such critical roles in the wards educating our students. Besides giving junior doctors the opportunity to hone their own teaching skills, we hope to foster stronger student-alumni relations and develop a culture of teaching and mentoring within the community.

With the help of the Duke-NUS Medical Alumni society, we hope this programme can and will encourage alumni to become mentors by having students fill out feedback forms for their mentors. Taking it one step further, we are also looking into possibly having them complete the CEX or New Innovations evaluation forms if their mentors are senior residents and above. These evaluations will culminate in mentors receiving official letters of recognition from Duke-NUS to certify the number of hours the mentors have spent teaching at the end of each clerkship. This recognition will be of great help in fulfilling the teaching component of the residents' portfolios.

We would like to start with three core rotations: Internal Medicine, Paediatrics, and General Surgery. As the programme expands, we aim to integrate the resident mentors into the clerkships themselves. For example, it would be great to have a General Surgery alumnus teaching basic suturing skills to students, or an Obstetrics and Gynaecology mentor supervising the teaching clinics.

Besides improving the way we teach and learn in the wards, the ultimate goal for this programme is to cultivate kinship and camaraderie between the alumni and the students. For the alumni, I hope this provides them the opportunity to pay it forward, because they remember what it was like to be wide-eyed, enthusiastic, and in need of support and guidance. As for the students, I hope they appreciate their mentors' efforts and have the desire to pay it forward when their time comes - to look forward to becoming resident mentors themselves after they graduate. At the heart of it all, everyone has a stake in Duke-NUS, whether they are students or alumni.

For more information on the new Resident Mentorship Programme or if you are interested to sign up for this programme, please contact alumni@duke-nus.edu.sg.