- Mr Goh Yew Lin, Governing Board Chair, and members of our Governing Board
- Professor Ng Wai Hoe, Group CEO, SingHealth
- Our Master Academic Clinicians and senior clinician leaders from the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre
- Distinguished guests and colleagues
- And a very special welcome to the Duke-NUS Class of 2030, and your families and friends
Welcome and significance of the ceremony
Good evening, everyone. It gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you tonight.
The White Coat Ceremony holds a special place in the Duke-NUS calendar. In a few moments, each of you will step forward and put on a white coat. The coat will not make you a doctor tonight. But it marks the responsibilities you are beginning to accept: to learn with discipline, to serve with compassion, and to earn the trust that patients will one day place in you.
You are entering a profession and joining a community that will teach, challenge and support you as you learn what it means to care for others. The presence of so many Master Academic Clinicians, senior leaders, faculty and mentors is a powerful sign of what this moment means to our community. You are not simply beginning a course of study.
Last year, we marked 20 years of the Duke-NUS story. Over the past two decades, Duke-NUS has graduated more than 1,000 doctors. They are caring for patients as clinicians, advancing knowledge as clinician-scientists, educating the next generation, improving health systems and creating new models of care.
On a personal note, tonight is especially meaningful for me too. I stepped into the role of Dean earlier this year, so this also my first White Coat Ceremony.
Different paths, one shared purpose
Let me take a moment to introduce this newest cohort, which is our 20th MD cohort—a cohort that much like Duke-NUS itself, is different by design.
There is no single route into medicine, and there is no single kind of experience that makes someone capable of becoming an excellent doctor. Some of you discovered this calling later. Some carried it with you while you trained deeply in another field. Some made difficult choices and real sacrifices before deciding that now was the time to act. These decisions takes conviction.
It takes humility to begin again as a student, and courage to step away from a path in which you may already have become established.
Across the class, many of you come with strong foundations in the life sciences, biomedical sciences, engineering and other fields closely connected to medicine and health. Others bring academic and professional experience from fields more varied: psychology, anthropology, finance and the creative arts. Nearly half of this class, 38 of you, come to medicine after working in other professions and 20 per cent of you actually come from a healthcare background. Eight of you joined us through the Pathways to Medicine programme, after pursuing diverse academic interests at top universities before choosing to enter graduate medical school.
Also among you are musicians, performers, writers and athletes who have taken your talents to national, regional and international stages. We are proud of the calibre of this class, and immensely proud and grateful that you have chosen to commit the next four years to medicine at Duke-NUS.
Because at Duke-NUS, we believe that a previous degree, career or accomplishment is not something to leave at the door. The route is different; the standards are not. What is distinctive is the wider range of knowledge, experience and ways of seeing that you can now apply to patient care, science and health systems. Simply put, your unconventional past is what the future of medicine needs.
This is why Duke-NUS was created as a graduate-entry medical school. Singapore needs doctors who can do more than master clinical knowledge. It needs people who can connect disciplines, ask better questions, work across teams and see problems through more than one lens. In Duke-NUS, we call this the Clinician-Plus: a doctor who brings something more to medicine and uses it in service of patients and society.
I also want to recognise a few important groups in the audience today. Forty-nine members of this cohort are women, the largest number we have welcomed into an MD cohort. This is progress worth celebrating, and I am delighted that Associate Professor Chan Yoke Hwee, the Chief Executive Officer of KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, has agreed to lead the Class in reciting the Hippocratic Oath this evening. Her career as a clinician, researcher and role model shows where talent, purpose and service can lead.
Another group of VIPs that I want to salute are the families of our students. For some of you, the decision to pursue medicine has changed not just one person’s plans, but those of an entire family. So, to the families, partners, and loved ones in this room and those cheering from afar, thank you. You have encouraged, waited, worried and believed. Your support brought this class to tonight, and it will continue to matter in the years ahead.
What the white coat asks of you
To the Class of 2030: In a few moments, you will stand to take the Hippocratic Oath, alongside your peers, faculty, mentors and others.
As you do, ask yourself a question you will need to return to throughout your career: What kind of doctor do I want to be? The answer is not only about the knowledge you will acquire or the procedures you will learn. It is also about how you will use authority, how you will respond when you are uncertain, how you will treat the people who work beside you, and whether patients and caregivers feel heard when they are at their most vulnerable.
You are entering medicine at a time of profound change. Care is shifting from reacting to disease to preventing it and people are living longer. Data science, precision medicine, and artificial intelligence are changing how we understand patients and make decisions. Research is moving discoveries from the laboratory towards care with growing speed.
These changes will demand scientific rigour and technical confidence. But rest assured your education at Duke-NUS and across the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre will give you the knowledge, tools and fortitude to meet that future. It will also ask you to work in teams, challenge assumptions and apply your earlier experiences to the questions you ask.
In your third year, you will also engage in hands-on research. There will be frustrating days when a challenging experiment refuses to work, and moments when a result opens a door you had not expected. I hope you will discover, as I did, that research and the quest for knowledge teaches more than technique. It teaches patience, curiosity and the discipline to let evidence change your mind. Research is also the bedrock that ultimately drives better clinical care, resulting in real impact for patients.
But as technology grows and as we know more knowledge, the more important the human foundations of medicine will be. Through clinical rotations, simulations or mentorship and the work of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Medical Humanities Institute, you will learn not only how to treat illness, but how to listen: to understand what a diagnosis means to a person, what a family is carrying, and the importance of dignity at every moment when you wear that white coat.
Your different backgrounds will be an advantage only if you continue to learn from one another. Be generous with what you know and be humble about what you do not. All of you bring different lenses. The artist may notice what others overlook. The scientist may frame a sharper question. The engineer may see a system that can be redesigned. The person who has worked in another profession may understand a patient’s fears in an entirely different way. Bring these perspectives together.
Closing
Very soon, you will step forward to receive your white coat. When you do, remember that you are not stepping forward alone. Behind you are the people who helped you reach this room. Around you are your classmates who will become your trusted colleagues, friends and confidants. Ahead of you, but always willing to lend a hand are your faculty, mentors and clinical teams who will guide you.
On behalf of everyone at Duke-NUS and the SingHealth Duke-NUS AMC, let me once again extend our warmest welcome. We are all, and I personally, am immensely proud of you and delighted that you have chosen to be part of this community.
So congratulations, Class of 2030 and welcome to Duke-NUS!