The Other Specialties talk involved a wide range of specialists.

Paediatrics: Dr Kristy Fu

The talk was kickstarted by Dr Kristy Fu, who is currently a Consultant in the Division of Paediatric Critical Care in the Department of Paediatrics under Khoo Teck Puat - National University Children's Medical Institute, National University Hospital. Dr Fu is also a passionate teacher and contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate education. She was awarded the Best Teacher Award and Best Young Clinician Mentor Award by the National University Hospital and Department of Paediatrics on many occasions.

She shared with us 4 guiding questions on how one should choose one’s residency. 1) What aspect of Medicine did I really enjoy in school and made me really excited to come to work daily? 2) What type of patient contact do I enjoy the most or can embrace the most? 3) What else apart from clinical medicine makes me happy? 4) Which residency programme would suit me? She then ended off by asking us to consider what kind of doctor we hope to become at the end of residency. These questions not only serve as wonderful core questions in the contemplation for the pursuit of residency, but also as essential questions one should ponder in the course of medicine, to determine one’s passions and interests.

Next, she shared a typical day in the life of a paediatric resident, which starts at 7am before formal ward rounds, is dotted with morning departmental teaching, and is followed by ward rounds at 9am. Around lunchtime, there is lunchtime teaching for residents, before clinics around 2pm. This is perhaps a format applicable to most other residency programmes too!

To find out more about the NUHS paediatric residency programme, she made a call for interested applicants to visit the NUHKids Open House which occurs in July annually, and also kindly opened up her mailbox for students to get in touch with her.

Anaesthesiology: Prof Tay Sook Muay

This was followed by a lively engagement by Prof. Tay Sook Muay, a familiar name to many who have walked through the doors of SGH. A Senior Consultant anaesthesiologist, she called on students to give oneself time to find out if one can truly cope with the various difficulties of the speciality. She shared, fittingly, that she had initially wanted to join Paediatrics, but realised that she could not cope with seeing children with cancer, especially back in the 1980s where cancer treatment wasn’t yet so developed.

She eventually decided on anaesthesiology after a posting opportunity opened her eyes to the field, and described anaesthesiology as having a good balance of physiology and pharmacology, alongside an understanding of anatomy.

Students who would enjoy constant contact with the patient and family after the patient moves to the ICU, who have both a steady heart and hand, and who have the ability to think on one’s feet to make quick decisions for therapy, this could be the place for you!

Emergency Medicine: Dr Peng Li Lee

Dr Peng Li Lee, Head and Senior Consultant of the Emergency Medicine Department at NUH, then commenced, with slides interspersed with warnings cautioning students with a faint heart to turn away. She described EMed as an Exciting field of clinical practice which allows integration of medical specialities in one, and described herself as a generalist with focus on acute care and resuscitation.

To her, EMed is a field that spans from cradle to grave, and where patients are more often than not seen once with no follow up. Being the first point of contact for most patients, she suggested the EMed doctors be able to triage, treat and street (discharge), advise or refer where needed. Even in EMed, she shared, there are many subspecialties to consider, including trauma, critical care, and toxicology.

For those interested in learning more about the schedules for a job entailing such high adrenaline, Dr Peng shared that doctors in the ED work in 3 shifts, which leaves some of them reeling from adrenaline late at night if they worked the afternoon shift, or gives them the opportunity to pursue their hobbies after work if they worked the morning shift.

Psychiatry: Dr Cyrus Ho

Next, we had a sharing from Dr Cyrus Ho, consultant psychiatrist at NUH. Speaking with a reassuring tone of voice and displaying a calm demeanour, he emphasised the importance of needing potential residents to be able to manage not only mental illnesses, but also to encourage wellness and resilience in patients.

He highlighted the importance for residents to able to handle ambiguity, to be emotionally stable and resilient, to be able to handle challenging events such as agitation, suicides and most importantly, to enjoy talking and be genuinely interested in lives of others.

He went a step further to share a list of pros and cons with those present at the talk, which has been reproduced here:

Pros

1. Impact life of patient and families in the long term
2. More time to know patients and their lives in depth
3. Huge potential for exploration into neuroscience and neuropsychiatry
4. Good work-life balance
5. Can continue working for a long time

Cons

1. No biomarkers or objective tools for diagnosis/ treatment, symptom-based, heterogenous presentation
2. Can be emotionally draining
3. Some disorders are untreatable
4. Have to manage patient’s psychological issues
5. Confusion with psychologists/ social worker/ counsellors

Our last two speakers, Dr Nga Min En and Dr Low Ying Liang, peppered their talks with jokes and called upon each other’s specialties as being greatly similar in nature.

Pathology: Dr Nga Min En

Dr Nga is an anatomical pathologist in NUH. Her areas of clinical and research interest include Cytopathology, particularly where it intersects with head and neck tumours. She has published in journals such as Cancer Cytopathology, Cell and Nature Communications.

She also has a keen interest in undergraduate, postgraduate and interprofessional teaching, and is the recipient of several NUS teaching awards. She has developed Pathweb, an online pathology resource that has users in over 70 countries. She has also written a Cytopathology textbook, which was published in 2021.

Dr Nga presented a set of slides with the famous dark blue colour as we have come to associate with M2 Pathology slides, and suggested using a set of screening questions to contemplate one’s pre-application suitability:

1. Are your hobbies related to visuals e.g. photography, art
2. Did you enjoy playing where’s wally?
3. Do you enjoy jigsaw puzzles?
4. Are you OK without too much human contact?
5. Do you like working with your hands?
6. Do you enjoy detective stories?
7. Are you reasonably not allergic to studying?

She pointed out the differences between an anatomical pathologist/ histopathologist (who analyses tissue biopsies to provide a tissue diagnosis), a forensic pathologist (who performs forensic post-mortems to ascertain the cause of death) and a clinical/ chemical pathologist (who performs validation, analysis and interpretation of blood/ lab tests).

Radiology: Dr Low Ying Liang

Meanwhile, Dr Low Ying Liang is a Consultant Radiologist in National University Hospital, with subspecialty interests in Neuro, Head and Neck, and Body Imaging. He succinctly described radiologists as being the doctor’s doctor. He then shared a cheeky image published in the BMJ back in 2005, which brought grins to many present.

We would like to thank all speakers who attended this year’s iteration of the Career Symposium for taking time off your busy schedules to share your experiences, and for leaving us with nuggets of wisdom and matters to ponder over. We look forward to the next!