theceomagazine.com | 125“THERE’S A KEEN
INTEREST TO SEE
HOW MUCH MORE
CARE CAN BE
DELIVERED WITH ...HEALTHY LIFESTYLE
AND SELF-
EMPOWERMENT.”TOP MENTOR
Terrance is passionate about mentoring junior doctors
and, in 2005, he was voted as one of the top five
medical mentors in the SingHealth
Junior Doctors survey.“I think it’s satisfying when you can mentor people,”
he says. “I felt it was important, before junior doctors
even start work, to round them up and give them some
teachings on the crucial things to look out for in the
cardiac department.”in their own care; patient education so they
understand the issues better; and use of IT, so they
can be managed at home without having to see a
doctor as often.”
The other issue is the expectations that patients
have when it comes to healthcare. “As people get
more educated, they have higher expectations of
care and that includes a lot of high technology,
expensive care,” Terrance says. “So we can now treat
people much longer with very expensive treatments,
which carry their own risks. For example, there are
new devices we can implant in patients. Then the
other challenge becomes how do we have this
dialogue with patients about their expectations.
How far do we want to push the envelope?”
This connects back to the issue of aged care,
especially advance care planning. “It means asking:
‘Does every patient want to end up at the ICU
with a whole slew of devices put in?’, ‘Do they
want to say where to draw the line?’ and ‘How do
we know what their wishes are and how do we
discuss them?’ That’s an approach being looked at.”THE PATH AHEAD
As NHCS continues into the future, it is placing
a strong focus on improving and re-engineering
patient care using IT. It already has fully electronic
medical records and wants to develop systems to
provide decision support that reminds doctors or
nurses when something should be done but might
be overlooked.
Further, Terrance wants to empower the workers
themselves to think of solutions to some of the
everyday problems they face. “Very often, there is
a tendency for someone senior to say, ‘I know
what’s wrong with this particular process’ – whether
it is patient admission, discharge or outpatient care- and immediately propose a solution to be
implemented,” Terrance says. “However, increasingly,
we find that the solutions are not as obvious to us
as to those who are close to the work being done.
There may be ways to improve processes out there,
but they can only be seen by the people working
daily with that process. So there is a need for us to
train and empower staff who are working on the
ground in a specific setting to find the solutions for
themselves – to see whether their working
environment or processes can be improved for the
patients and for themselves.”
At the end of the day, Terrance is optimistic.
With such a committed team, there is much to be
proud of. “We have good team spirit at the centre,”
he says. “We have a fantastic team of people who
are very dedicated to patients and will go the
extra mile.”Interview | INVEST