A/Prof Goh Lee Gan, President, SMA

Distinguished guests, Prof SY Tan, Presidents and members of sister professional organizations, ladies and gentlemen.

It is my pleasure this afternoon to welcome you to the joint SMA-IPPG seminar on professionalism. The acronym IPPG stands for Inter-Professional Presidents’ Group and is a body that has been formed in recent years for the interchange of ideas, views and issues that affect professions in Singapore. I have always enjoyed the IPPG meetings and this afternoon is the SMA’s turn to play host.

The seminar this afternoon is in reality a three-in-one event, namely, it is a seminar to exchange views and to discuss the topic of professionalism, the launch of the center of medical ethics and professionalism (CMEP for short) and the launch of the webpage for the center. Let me speak briefly on each of these three components.

The topic of professionalism was proposed at one of the meetings of the IPPG as it is felt that we need to reaffirm the characteristics of a profession both to ourselves as professionals as well as to the public. There are many characteristics that come to mind that define who is a professional and what is a profession. I will leave Prof SY Tan, the guest-of-honour and the keynote speaker of this meeting as well as the panel of speakers to enlighten us on their perspectives. Suffice to say that professionalism is vitally important to continue to earn the respect of the public, our peers and ourselves.

The development of a center for professionalism and ethics is one of the pro-active activities of the Singapore Medical Association. The modern world is a fast changing world. The waves of consumerism, enterpreneurism, and commercialism are threatening to drown what is professionalism. More than ever, we need to have a forum where professional issues can be debated, documented, and the collated world views can be disseminated to guide fellow professionals.

We need the high lights to show the general direction of professional behaviour. We also need the low lights to light up the path ahead of us as we deal with the day-to-day matters in our professional lives. The center for professionalism and ethics we hope, will provide the health care providers of Singapore, these guiding lights. The germination of the idea for the center of professionalism and ethics is the result of the conjoint efforts of a number of people in the SMA Council in the past few years. Of these, I would like to mention two who have worked hard to make things happen. They are Drs Cheong Pak Yean and T Thirumoorthy. The budding center also owes much to the support and encouragement of many outside the SMA like Professor Balachandran, Dr Chew Chin Hin and Professor SY Tan. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them. The centre will no doubt be a rich source of CME for our doctors. I will leave Dr T Thirumoorthy to share with you the detailed vision of the Centre.

A webpage can be a powerful source of information and forum for exchange. This brings me to the third component of the 3-in-1 activity that I alluded to earlier. We have exploited the usefulness of the webpage to support our center for medical ethics and professionalism. In it we have put together resource materials on medical ethics, professionalism, practice and health laws both of local as well as international focus. We have also included information on research as well as a forum for exchange of ideas. I would like to thank Miss Regina Chin for putting our ideas into pages at the click of a button as well as to demonstrate what are in the webpages.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the organizing committee of this afternoon’s event headed by Dr T Thirumoorthy and Miss Ng Wee Fong.

It now remains for me to wish one and all in the audience, both those of you in the medical profession as well as those of you in the sister professions, a fruitful afternoon in your deliberations on the subject of professionalism and its relevance to each of us as professionals. Thank you.

4 Jun 2000