July 25, 2022

On 27 July 2019, Channel NewsAsia (CNA) Insider featured a video article on Ms Bay Song Lin, who works as a medical illustrator at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Ms Bay creates graphics and animations of human anatomical structures to enhance the learning experience for students in the faculty. For example, one of her projects involved an interactive animation of fetal development in a womb.

The selection process at NUS Medicine assesses candidates on their academic capabilities and personality traits. Despite this, local news agencies, The Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia, observed unethical practices by practicing physicians from 2015 to 2017. These doctors were reported to be overcharging, prescribing the wrong medications, and displaying impolite conduct. This motivated Dr Lyn Li Lean (Department of Anaesthesia, National University Hospital), Dr Lian Kah Ti (Department of Anaesthesia, National University Hospital), and Associate Professor Ryan Hong (NUS Department of Psychology) to test if penultimate Year 4 medical students possessed desirable traits prior to graduation in ‘How the personalities of medical students at the National University of Singapore differ from those of the local non-medical undergraduate population: a cross-sectional study’ (Singapore Medical Journal, 2018).

By measuring penultimate students from NUS Medicine against a broad sample of NUS students, the researchers found that the medical students scored higher than non-medical peers in neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. This indicates that NUS Medicine students possessed desirable traits prior to graduation. Although the results seemed to favour the selection process of medical students, the researchers caution that the selected medical students may still show poor attitudes over the course of education or clinical work.

Read the full article here.