In more than 35 years as a doctor in Singapore, I have never felt more despondent as now and I am certainly not alone in losing confidence in how self-regulation is administered by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC).
Three recent SMC cases have shocked doctors: •A 2017 case when paediatrician Chia Foong Lian was suspended for three months for missing a difficult diagnosis; •A case this year when orthopaedic surgeon Lim Lian Arn was fined $100,000 for failing to tell his patient that a steroid injection could have side-effects such as discolouration of the skin; and •A breach of confidentiality case this year, when psychiatrist Soo Shuenn Chiang was fined $50,000 for writing a memo to get a patient admitted to the Institute of Mental Health. What followed were unprecedented petition drives by the hitherto conservative medical professionals, who signed three petitions consisting of 1,000, 6,400 and 8,400 signatures in the three cases respectively. The doctors I know who signed the petitions are serious-minded people who do not put ink to paper lightly as their professional reputations are at stake. The Ministry of Health formed a work group last month to review the taking of informed consent and the SMC disciplinary process. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/site/privacy-policy/ oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/community-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/S6J6NWTXIRY4S2325UILGDHSAVDOQ6CY/
