Issue 36 - NUS Medicine

NUS YONG LOO LIN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Issue 36 / November 2020

DEAN'S MESSAGE

Dear Friends,

It has been nine months since Sars-CoV-2 appeared amidst an unsuspecting and unprepared world. In these nine months, the coronavirus has sickened close to 40 million people and taken more than 1 million lives.* It has sent the world’s economies into recession, separated families, upended everyone’s lives, exacerbated geopolitical tensions, and spawned a new global race to produce and procure the much-needed vaccine that will help to bring the pandemic to an end.

Dossier

Load-bearing Exoskeleton Idea Scores at Medical Grand Challenge 2020

The fourth edition of the NUS Medical Grand Challenge (MGC) took place online for the first time on 28 August. This year’s top team, ARMAS, tells us more about their experience.

Learning Virtually about Patient Safety, Safely

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, medical educators face the challenge of balancing practical learning experiences while ensuring the safety of students by minimising the latter’s exposure to contagion. However, this also presents opportunities for current technological tools and developments to plug the gap in training methods in medical education.

Heartfelt Healing: Rekindling One’s Love for Medicine and Humanity

Emotionally resilient. Socially conscious. Globally minded.

Science of Life

Finding Needles in the Cardiac Haystack

Clinician-scientists discover new biomarkers to predict heart failure after a heart attack.

Genetic Map of the Heart Opens New Ways of Understanding Heart Disease

Heart disease is the top cause of death worldwide. In Singapore, it accounts for one third of all deaths each year.

Ethically Speaking

How Should a COVID-19 Vaccine be Distributed?

It is hard to think of a question that more people will care about right now, all around the world.

How Should We Decide Who Gets a COVID-19 Vaccine First?

With promising news surrounding the development of different COVID-19 vaccines, many are anxiously waiting for the day when the coronavirus can be effectively eliminated.

COVID-19 Safe?

People who recovered from SARS 17 years ago and others who never had SARS or COVID-19 have immune cells that could provide immunity against COVID-19.

Medical Students Turned Emergency Workers in Pandemic Fight

When DORSCON Orange was first announced in February, we were then-Phase II students walking in as a class to our last afternoon of lectures before our study break. We were too young to remember SARS and new to the healthcare scene. It was a time of uncertainty and apprehension for everyone around us.

My Brother SG: Supporting Our Migrant Workers

My Brother SG is a community service initiative that aims to empower our migrant brothers.

Nursing

Call of Duty: Returning to the Frontlines

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in April, nursing veteran Associate Professor Liaw Sok Ying donned scrubs and went back on duty at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases’ (NCID) pandemic Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Teaching Family Medicine in the Age of COVID-19

“Dear assessors, all medical interviews scheduled for tomorrow have been cancelled.”

People of NUS Medicine

Celebrating Our Teachers – They Who Teach Also Learn

Our educators have been the cornerstone of the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine since its founding 115 years ago. Vice-Dean for Education, Assoc Prof Lau Tang Ching, examines what it means to learn and teach in this day and age (of a pandemic), while the four Assistant Deans for Education—Assoc Prof Alfred Kow, Assoc Prof Marion Aw, Assoc Prof Marie-Veronique Clement and Dr Chen Zhi Xiong—share their hopes for healthcare education this year, eureka moments and what keeps them going.

Celebrating Our Teachers – No Dream Too Big

This Teacher’s Day, we hear from Associate Professor Jenny Loo on her journey as a healthcare educator and her hopes for the future generation of audiologists.

Keeping Cool in the Heat of Things

Research Associate Professor Jason Lee from the Department of Physiology and the Basic Science Lead Principal Investigator (PI) of the Human Potential programme at NUS Medicine would like us to chill, literally.