A/Prof Shirley Ooi, pictured here during our interview
A/Prof Shirley Ooi, a familiar name and face to most medical students, has actively been engaged in medical education for students in the preclinical and clinical years, and even after medical school. A/Prof Shirley had been involved in building up the NUHS Residency since its inception in 2009 till June 2020 and had been conferred the prestigious 2020 ACGME-International Physician Leader award. She is currently the Associate Dean and Medical Clinical Education Lead of the National University Hospital (NUH). In this interview, students from the Careers’ Directorate (CD) speak with A/Prof Shirley Ooi (SO) to find out more about how she came to join Emergency Medicine, how school was like in the past for her and a little glimpse into her life. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you decide to pursue this specialty that you are in now?
Perhaps I should let you know that I was supposed to be a paediatric resident. During my time, NUH was not one of the hospitals under MOH. It was actually under the MOE, it being a University hospital. NUH had to recruit their own Medical Officers to run the place. I recall that when I was doing my House Officer-ship at a MOH hospital, one day I happened to come across an advertisement in The Straits Times and saw that NUH was looking for paediatric residents. I applied and got a place. After my housemanship, I resigned from MOH and joined NUH. During that time, the system was a bit different. To be fair to our Singaporean male colleagues who had to serve their National Service, everyone was not allowed to start their traineeship in the first two years as Medical Officers. In the first year that I joined NUH, I was posted to the Emergency Medicine Department. I had never heard about the discipline before, but they posted me to the discipline. In my first year as a Medical Officer, I actually enjoyed it and I was quite inspired by my Registrar.
My Registrar was the first and only one at that point who had actually done the postgraduate exams in Emergency Medicine. I found that she seemed to know something about everything, so I was quite inspired.
At the end of that one year, the Paediatrics department in NUH said that I could do a 6-month posting with them – not the start of a traineeship, just a posting – because their senior trainees were going for exams.
I did 6 months of posting with Paediatrics. At the end of it, I felt that I somehow enjoyed Emergency Medicine more, and because of that, I gave up my paediatric traineeship and went into emergency medicine. I would say I have no regrets.
What do you like best about your job now?
I enjoy being in touch with the breadth of medicine in Emergency Medicine – as you know Emergency Medicine cuts across all the specialties. I enjoy the diagnostic challenge of the undifferentiated patient who presents to the Emergency Department. I also enjoy the fact that it combines the ability to engage in some cerebral activities with procedural skills.
The best part of it is that I enjoy being in direct contact with my students and junior doctors, because I enjoy teaching them direct patient contact, and be able to guide and teach them. For me, teaching has really been the fuel that has kept me alive and to continue to have a passion for medicine. I think without teaching, I would probably have “shrivelled up and died”!
I also enjoy that I am able to combine clinical work with teaching, some research and currently also in educational leadership. I find this very meaningful because then I can also change and have some influence in shaping the system to benefit more learners.
Can you share with us what is one challenging part of your job?
Emergency Medicine is a 24/7 discipline. Even now I still do night shifts, weekend shifts and public holiday shifts. It means to say that some of our off days are during the weekdays. Nobody “respects” your off day if it happens to be on a weekday. Sometimes you find it is quite difficult to have an off day on a weekday as you may have to come back for a meeting. So in that sense, that is one of the challenges.
Also, I guess that being in educational leadership, things go round the clock and you find that there is no such thing as a day where you are really cut off from all activities. Even on your off days, you may still have to respond to emails.
What is your most cherished memory from your schooling days?
I would say that it was actually my hostel days, staying at the KE VII Hall at Sepoy Lines that is at the SGH compound. It is because that was when I had the opportunity to build very deep friendships – friends who remained very close friends even beyond my medical school years.
What was also interesting is that the hostel was situated just next to SGH, so I had a lot of opportunities going to the wards. I remember spending lots of time going to the wards until 8-9 pm on most days. When I came back to the hostel, friends would come to my room and we would chit-chat and have supper. So I would say that I was not really a very stellar student because I didn’t have that much time to study, but what I found very helpful was that I had a lot of clinical exposure that helped me a lot as a doctor. More importantly, through the interactions with my friends, I acquired soft skills that helped me when I came out to work and had to interact with people from all walks of life.
How was studying Medicine like in the past?
Our campus then was at the College of Health Building (where the MOH is located at now). It was a five-year programme and in the first one-and-a-half year, we did basic clinical sciences which comprised anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. These three subjects were taught in isolation, there was minimal clinical application and the exams was also structured into three different papers.
The paraclinical sciences teachings of microbiology, pharmacology and pathology continued into Year 3 and Year 4. I understand that now, students finish up the paraclinical sciences in Year 2 – which I think is a good thing.
It was in the final year that it was the first time being examined on clinical medicine. There were 3 subjects – Medicine (comprised of Internal Medicine and Paediatrics), Surgery (General Surgery and Orthopaedics) and O&G. The three different subjects were examined at the same time. But what was also notable at that time was that there was no chance for students to go on electives, there was no time even for a break between Year 4 and Year 5!
The curriculum then was heavily focused on inpatient care. For example, for Family Medicine, we only had a 5-day attachment at the GP clinic. Emergency Medicine was unheard of – we never had any exposure to Emergency Medicine. There was also no Student Internship Programme.
There were also no longitudinal tracks like what you have currently – for example the Health Ethics, Law & Professionalism module.
What is your personal/ guiding philosophy?
Having a grateful and thankful heart that seeks to touch lives. Personally, I do not take things for granted. I count it a blessing and privilege to be a doctor, to be given the various things that I can do, and I attribute all these to the grace of God. These help me to remain more cheerful and resilient and allows me to find my work meaningful. Medicine is not a sprint but a several decades long marathon and so passion for it and perseverance are paramount for success.
To end it off, A/Prof Shirley shared that she has been going to the gym to exercise in her free time and that she reads while exercising to kill two birds with one stone. Rather ironically, she then shared that she has a phobia of furry, feathery animals, being scared of all birds and mammals (except human beings)!
We thank A/Prof Shirley for sharing her time with us in this interview and for her tireless effort in improving medical education and training paths for postgraduates.
