By Assoc Prof Ong Biauw Chi
Pro-Tem Chairman, Medical Board, Sengkang Health 

If you were speaking to your healthcare colleagues to unite them, what would be your call to arms?

This is mine: Have courage to persist.

Courage to persist is when you believe so strongly that something can be done better, you go all out to achieve it and try to bring the village along.   Personally, I am a doer.   And this mantra keeps me going.

My team and I have been building the Sengkang Health (SKH) identity for a while.   Most of our ideas are not rocket science and are also being tried by other healthcare institutions.   The real test comes when we meet barriers and challenges in implementing something different.   When we are comfortable doing things a certain way, changing mindsets is often the greatest hurdle. The courage to persist helps us overcome these challenges.

In a healthcare setting, it means we have to:

Dare to share the responsibility in the healthcare journey with patients.    Patients have the right to decide their own healthcare journeys.   This comes with the responsibility of understanding the possible outcomes of the care they receive. In this age where patients are more educated and even do their own research, can we start engaging patients at a deeper level on disease management and treatments? 

Courage to persist is when you believe so strongly that something can be done better, you go all out to achieve it and try to bring the village along.

Our patients should share the responsibility for getting themselves well.    All of us – patients, physicians, nurses, allied health professionals (AHPs) and the community general practitioners – can contribute to a more meaningful partnership that can inspires truly holistic care and wellness.

Dare to truly put the patient at the centre.   Real compassion starts with thinking about what the patients want and not just what we can provide them.   We are building a network of health providers who value the human relationship and putting a healthcare system in place for social connections to flourish.   Being a little more caring will take a little more engagement and more time, but it could help us achieve more fulfilling outcomes. 

Dare to create the kampung spirit.   Let's retrace our kampung spirit, and co-create an environment which can be very fast-paced but socially connected.   We can create our “village” based on the acuity levels of our patients.   Each village will consist of specialists, nurses, general practitioners, AHPs and community health providers who speak to an overall care integrator.

This integrator can really be anyone on the team, even a neighbour taking ownership of individual patients, connecting the patients back to the village.

Making this happen will not be easy or simple.   But as our late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew reminded us, “I set out to do something, I keep chasing it until it succeeds.”   We must practise that same tenacity. 

We challenge people to come with a heart for your patient, colleagues, peers, and the very way we treat each other.

Dare to unlearn and relearn.   We need to go back and balance the science of Medicine with art.   Our system of specialisations makes it all too easy to forget that the practice of Medicine has always been a fine mastery of art.   We are all but lifelong apprentices of an ancient craft dedicated to our patients' healing, even as we pursue the extreme capabilities of science in Medicine.  

Medicine has always been based on human values and intuition.   We challenge people to come with a heart for your patient, colleagues, peers, and the very way we treat each other. With our roots in humility, let us dare to transcend what we already have in excellence.

Sengkang Health presents an opportunity for people who share the same vision as us to come together to deliver truly holistic healthcare.   We can’t change overnight, but we can take concrete small steps.   We have one chance in setting up these hospitals to get a few things right. I think it’s worth the time.