13 Aug 2025
Photo courtesy of LKCMedicine White Coat Ceremony Committee, NTU Campus
Good afternoon, Ms Chan Lai Fung, Chair of LKCSOM, Dean Prof Joseph Sung, GCEO NHG Health Mr Joe Sim, TTSH CEO Dr KC Tang, students of LKCSOM and their families, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen.
I am most honoured and happy to attend today’s White Coat Ceremony, made more significant by the fact that this is your school’s 15th anniversary and it is held so soon after our nation’s 60th birthday just last weekend.
In Chinese culture, 60 years is considered one life-cycle or
. Every year in the Chinese or Lunar calendar is given a name, so sixty years have sixty names and after which, the entire cycle repeats itself. For example, 2025 is also known as 
and it is the 42th year in the 60-year cycle of the Chinese calendar.
It is therefore timely at this juncture of nation-building to refocus and redouble our efforts at understanding why are we here, after our country has existed for one complete cycle of 60 years and now is poised to begin another new cycle.
And it all begins with understanding what is the medical profession about and what does being a doctor mean to you? I have been a doctor for more than 30 years and I will be lying to you if I tell you I have never doubted why I am a doctor. There are moments when I have wondered if I have made the right choice and could I have been somewhere else doing something completely different.
Let me assure you that all these doubtful moments are OK and part of life as a medical student and as a doctor. It would be extremely rare for a doctor to be always sure that he was meant to be a doctor and never to have experienced any doubt. Actually, I know of no such doctor.
The key is how does one deal with such moments of doubt? My way of dealing with this is to have an anchor point that I always return to. What is that core belief which is also your anchor point that you can and do return to?
For me, it is to remind myself what does being a doctor mean to me, and at an even more fundamental level, to answer what is the elemental core of medicine?
Today, I will share with you what my anchor point is. I became the President of the Singapore Medical Association 19 years ago in 2006; which I understand is also the year that many of you were born in. Which also sort of tells you what an old person I am. One of the jobs of being SMA President is to write a monthly President’s column in the SMA newsletter. In my first President’s Column which was published in May 2006, I wrote,
“Does medicine endure because of its technology or its values? Technology changes but values endure. Values such as empathy, sacrifice, compassion, respect for life and dignity for all. We enshrine all these values in our various codes of ethics and professionalism. But these codes and values are but mere manifestations of that something that is far more pervasive and powerful. In our current emphasis on political correctness, scientific rigour and market discipline, the medical profession has lost sight of its one most priceless foundation and purest ideal: the morality of medicine.
Medicine, at its elemental core, is a force for good”.
19 years later, as I stand in the deep autumn of my medical career, I still believe that Medicine, at its elemental core, is a force for good.
This is the anchor point I return to again, and again, that medicine is a force for good. When I am faced with disappointments caused by circumstance or people, I tell myself I am still plugging away as a doctor because I believe Medicine, as its elemental core, is a force for good. And I want to be part of that force for good. It is a simple belief that maybe in 2025, may even seem a bit naive. So be it.
In the decades-long career that awaits you after you graduate, you will be disappointed by your fellow doctors, as we all have been. It is an imperfect world we live in.
These range from the obviously selfish and uncaring fellow medical officer to the nice senior you worked with that ended up being disciplined by the Singapore Medical Council; such examples will increase in number as you get older.
These doctors fall short and tar the good name of the profession. You will feel disappointed, even dismayed. And you wonder, you doubt, and you ask, is this what the medical profession is all about? While you doubt, you must not compromise your beliefs and your values and become like what you beheld. People disappoint people. People fail people.
Sometimes it is just circumstance that fails you. You are simply exhausted at 3am in the morning sitting slumped over the ward counter and your phone rings again. Someone needs your attention at Ward 57. You haven’t had a proper dinner let alone supper and wonder, is this what you signed up for? Or maybe you didn’t get the posting you applied for and you have to do a posting that you think you have no aptitude for. Life just doesn’t seem fair. But let me assure you that life is unfair not just to you, but to everybody, albeit in different ways at different times. But the call or posting will surely come to an end.
This is the time that you must return to your anchor point, that quietest of corners in your innermost of spaces that called out to you years ago and continues to call out to you again and again. That precious anchor point in you on which everything else about being a doctor hangs. You have to continue to believe in that anchor point while you have doubts. I say again it is natural to have doubts as you try to believe, because faith without doubt is probably blind faith.
But today, at this White Coat Ceremony, if you are not sure what your anchor point is, don’t worry. You still have time to figure it out. Five years of medical school is enough time to figure this out. Today is the beginning of you being officially inducted into this force for good called medicine and the medical profession. Even as we celebrate this joyous occasion together with your loved ones, my wish for each and every one of you is that you will find that anchor point that you will hold fast to for all your days as a medical student and as a doctor. Thank you.
Photos courtesy of LKCMedicine White Coat Ceremony Committee, NTU Campus
