The future of medical education: the second 100 years

This is a proud year for the medical profession in Singapore, as we celebrate 100 years of medical education. A centennial should force us to ponder whether we are producing a doctor that meets Singapore's future needs. A few of the issues that we face include how much time staff allocate to quality teaching; the continual loss of many of the best senior clinical staff in all the teaching hospitals; whether the medical profession should reconsider what, and how, it teaches given the pace of new knowledge; how we incorporate advances into standard practice; how we incorporate issues such as patient safety and effective communication into a curriculum already overcrowded with traditional topics; and how we subsidise the cost of medical education. We have undertaken a major revision of how we choose applicants, the content of the curriculum, how it is taught, the way it is assessed, and the means to recruit and retain role models in academic medicine.