Award of 55 SMACF bursaries
The SMA Charity Fund (SMACF) awarded a total of 55 bursaries from the SMA Medical Students' Assistance Fund to support needy medical students for Academic Year 2017/18. The recipients come from all three local medical schools, namely Duke-NUS Medical School, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Each student received $5,000 to help with their living expenses.
In order to sustain our work, we seek your help in making a donation to the SMACF!
All donations collected are channelled directly to help students with living expenses rather than to offset their tuition fees or form part of an endowment fund. Monetary donations of $50 and above are eligible for 250% tax deduction. More details can be found at https://www.sma.org.sg/smacares.
Change of SMACF director
Mr Sitoh Yih Pin stepped down from the SMACF Board of Directors on 20 October 2017. Additionally, Mr Alex Koh Wei Peng was appointed into the Board of Directors on the same day.
The SMACF Board wishes to express its sincere appreciation to Mr Sitoh for his invaluable contributions to the SMACF during his tenure and also welcomes Mr Koh to the team.
Meeting with new MPS representative
The Medical Protection Society (MPS) has appointed Mr Harris Shum, who will be based in Singapore, as the regional director for Asia. Several SMA Council Members recently met with MPS representatives to discuss various issues, including facilitating better communication between the MPS office in the UK and SMA in Singapore.
SMA continues to engage with MPS and is the administrative office of MPS in Singapore. MPS members who need to approach the office can find the contact details at http://www.medicalprotection.org/singapore/contact.
Dialogue with medical student leaders
As part of SMA's regular dialogue with medical students, SMA Council Members met with student leaders from the three local medical schools on 25 October 2017.
Topics discussed included a review of the 1st SMA National Medical Students' Convention held in August 2017. The event had been well received, and the newly inducted student leaders expressed interest in continuing their seniors' hard work to foster greater interaction across the medical schools next year.
Regarding the residency system, student leaders shared concerns about their future training path, in particular the selection process and current shift to train more generalists. SMA shared possible avenues for the student leaders to raise their concerns.