For me, medicine has been a calling ever since I was really young as I felt that it was a very noble and exciting profession. However, I still prayed for a very long time for guidance because of the difficulty of the medicine course and I knew that a doctor’s life is not easy.

Since my secondary school days, I sought out opportunities to be exposed to a hospital environment, which helped me reaffirm that I really wanted to be a doctor. I was truly inspired during a carolling session at a children’s cancer ward when I saw how our songs made the kids really happy. Now I’m considering specialising in paediatric oncology.

I am really glad to be able to study medicine at NUS as this is my first choice institution. In addition, I was awarded a scholarship from Singhealth, which has helped defray the cost of my education for my parents.

Medicine really challenges you to do your utmost best. It forces you to be disciplined because the curriculum moves at a quick pace. I also treasure the opportunities to contribute to society while still in school through community projects such as NHS.

I have excellent mentors at the medical school. One of them is our Vice Dean of Education, Assoc Prof Hooi Shing Chuan. He really looks out for us students and is really passionate about providing us with the best education. He takes a great interest in the NHS project and provides us with guidance.

Another mentor of mine is Assoc Prof Simon Ong from the National Cancer Centre. He is a really brilliant man and exemplifies a good doctor. I learnt so much from him during a one-week attachment at the Centre.

My involvement with the NHS project and being a Singhealth scholar has provided me vast opportunities to interact with people in the health care industry and even people outside of it.

I have also been humbled by my experiences with the NHS project. The social work students involved in this project have provided me a whole new perspective and there is just so much that we can learn from each other.

1. Space
   We have space to interact and study - lots of benches and places for people to take a break.
2. Inter-Faculty Games
   The games really bring people together to make their Faculty proud. I really enjoy being on the medical school’s IFG Frisbee team.

I am very honoured to be given the opportunity to lead the Neighbourhood Health Screening (NHS) project. NHS provides free door-to-door screening for elderly residents of low-income rental flats in Bukit Merah, Taman Jurong and Macpherson. As many of these residents do not attend regular check-ups, we screen for common diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. We also deliver health education to residents, provide referrals to our partners and conduct personalised follow-up.

This is the 6th year of NHS, and the team has developed several new initiatives that will set the foundation for future generations to improve, build upon and expand.

We are implementing a new 5-year cycle, which will empower the grassroot partners to become independent in taking care of their population of elderly. We will then be able to replicate the model all around Singapore, not just the current three estates. We hope that within 5 years we can achieve the various objectives that we have listed out, which is to integrate the elderly back into the healthcare system and remove all cost barriers (which is provided by our free medical care follow-up – free drugs, free consultation, etc).

One of our new initiatives is having a doctor attached to each team on home visits. That way, doctors can do check-ups on the spot, for example if we had referred patients but they hadn’t gone for a follow-up. For every single visit, the doctor will write a new follow-up plan. Something very special about NHS is the personalized follow-up – every single patient has his or her own doctors and individualized referrals.

Social work students from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are also working with NHS this year. They are stationed at the headquarters and administer a questionnaire that they have devised. Depending on the questionnaire’s answers and what they observe when they interview the person, they will determine whether they need to conduct a home visit. If called for, they will then go in and do a survey of the person’s home environment and write referrals to our various partners. For these social cases from NHS, the social work students will do the follow-up.