Professor Endean Tan's Sharing session

Professor Endean Tan's sharing session was held on 2nd July 2017 at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH). It was a very fruitful session for those that came, with about 50 SMSI medical students of different Irish medical colleges and academic years in attendance.

It was an extremely informative and engaging sharing session, and the main topics that were discussed were the hot issues of “PEG (Pre-Employment Grant)” and “MOHH Employment”, which of late, have been areas of great concern to many of us international medical students.

The general perspective portrayed was that the PEG has become increasingly competitive over the years, with the rate of successful applicants decreasing exponentially by the year. This is in part due to the increasingly large cohort of NTU-LKCSOM adding on to the other two local medical schools at Yong Loo Lin Medical School and Duke-NUS. However, all is not lost - international medical students can still apply straight to MOHH for PGY1 at a date closer to graduation, which may prove to be a more viable route. Prof Endean also shared that with respect to employing doctors, Singaporean Local/Overseas graduates are given preference over over foreign international medical graduates/doctors. 

There was also a discussion regarding the residency training program in Singapore, as MOH has recently announced the shift of focus from ‘specialized medicine’ to ‘generalized medicine’ in light of our rapidly aging population. The general observation is that residencies for ‘generalized programs’ such as General Practice and Geriatrics will increase, while the ‘specialized programs’ such as Cardiothorarcic surgery have already stopped taking in new residents.