As August rolls around, we welcome the Class of 2021 that has just embarked on the first year of their MBBS studies here at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. We also congratulate the Class of 2016 upon their graduation and hope the medical knowledge and clinical skills they acquired over the last five years will be put to good use in service of the community.
I have said on various occasions that our students do the School proud. Not because they are uncommonly brilliant in their academic excellence, and impressively determined to succeed in their medical studies here at NUS Medicine. Rather, what we find heartening and commendable are their compassion, zest and an earnest desire to want to help make things better for the needy and the unfortunate.
The young men and women who choose to embark on careers in medicine undergo a gruelling, lengthy course of study that is characterised by long days and nights spent at lectures and tutorials, in hospital wards and clinics. Despite this load, many of them are heavily and enthusiastically involved in voluntary projects that share this common purpose and aim of helping the needy and less privileged in our society. It is involvement – and commitment – of the sort that takes up after-school hours, weekend rest time as well as vacation breaks and sees our students engrossed and absorbed in project work and related activities. Four of our medical students exemplify this admirable quality in their support for a cause that they embraced.
These four Year 4 students observed during their hospital postings, the struggles which mental health patients go through, in coping with their illnesses as well as the accompanying social stigmatisation that is still unfortunately applied to mental illness. The students decided that they would try to draw public attention to the plight of mental health patients, and also raise funds for the Singapore Association for Mental Health.
They chose to do this by taking part in a 7-day, 250km ultra-marathon in the Namibia desert in May this year. They set aside time from very busy study schedules to train over the course of six months. They passed up on opportunities to go on elective courses at medical schools overseas so that they could continue to train together. They also carefully chose a name for themselves – Mental Muscle. It was a name that underlined the psychological as well as physical durability needed for the race. It also defined the gritty toughness that is needed by mental health patients in their attempts to cope with their illnesses as well as societal ignorance. The Mental Muscle team comprising Jonathan See, Jon Tan Jui-Ern, Nicholas Eu and Stephen Hwang are of course safely home, having successfully completed their race and they have commenced their fifth and final year of medical studies.
I believe that these four students are on their way to becoming excellent doctors. They saw a need, and they responded with compassion and bold, imaginative and decisive action. It did not matter that they were just students, or that they were a mere quartet. This awesome foursome have succeeded in helping to raise awareness of mental health issues in an imaginative and captivating way. Donations to the SAMH continue to come in. These four students modelled the qualities that NUS Medicine aspires to inculcate in all our graduates. They also demonstrated in a very palpable way what quality of character is, and the boundless and transformational possibilities which it has power to bring about.
Warmest wishes,
Khay Guan