This is the full version of this article.
A/Prof Benjamin Ong graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1981, before going overseas to further his specialisation in neurology. Since his return to Singapore in 1990, A/Prof Ong has served in several appointments including being the head of the Division of Neurology, National University Hospital (NUH), Head of Medicine, NUS, and Chairman Medical Board, NUH. He was also the chief executive of the National University Health System (NUHS). In 2009, A/Prof Ong received the National Day Public Administration Medal (Silver) for his leadership contributions and in 2013, he received the Long Service Medal by the President of the Republic of Singapore in recognition of his dedicated service. He also received the Public Administration Medal (Gold) for outstanding efficiency, competence and industry in 2015. A/Prof Ong is currently a senior consultant with the Division of Neurology, NUH and has been the Director of Medical Services (DMS) with the Ministry of Health (MOH) since 2014.
The path of medicine
Dr Toh Han Chong (THC): DMS, Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Let’s start with the simple stuff!
DMS A/Prof Benjamin Ong (DMS): [laughs] Are there any simple stuff?
THC: Here is a start. Was medicine always your first choice when you were a young student in junior college (JC)?
DMS: During my time, the only JC was the National Junior College. I stayed back in the Anglo-Chinese School instead. I think I considered between engineering and medicine; partially because I’ve always been strong in the sciences and I enjoyed interacting with and helping people. By the time I was in Secondary 4, I was a lot keener on doing medicine and by pre-university 1, it was evident that medicine was my first choice.
THC: Was the specialty of neurology an aspiration from young?
DMS: No, but internal medicine was something that has always felt a lot easier for me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good with my hands; I was actually quite good with my hands. Both my department heads in medicine and surgery had asked me to consider their specialty, but I was a lot keener on medicine. That’s when the journey with your mentors really starts. In medicine, Prof Seah Cheng Siang, followed by Prof Wong Poi Kong, both took quite a fair bit of time talking to me about a career in medicine. There are a number of other people who have influenced my career. The neurology choice was interesting because, as is always the case – you don’t actually have unmitigated choices.
THC: In the old days?
DMS: Even now, though you have more choices now. Back in the day, you didn’t have the same opportunities. You had to have a potential training position, and then you applied to the When I passed my postgraduate examinations, offers available were in cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology and neurology.
THC: And the training was on the then Singapore General Hospital (SGH) campus?
DMS: I was actually offered a position in NUH at that time. The choices when joining the NUH units were in dermatology with Prof Chan Heng Leong and the other in neurology – those were the only choices available then. On the SGH campus, the traineeship offer was in cardiology.
THC: During neurology training, you had a subspecialty interest in neuromuscular disease and you went to England for your training?
DMS: I was in Oxford for my research fellowship and Queen Square for the clinical phase of my overseas training.
THC: Could you share your insights into postgraduate training at that time?
DMS: It was quite different because it was a lot more of an apprenticeship practice. I would say that there was actually a proper structure because of the department heads that were in NUH and NUS at that time. However, it was not a structure that is as clear as it is now. In those days, you complete your training when you finished your rotations. Essentially, you have then earned a chance and position to go overseas. Even then, overseas contacts contributed greatly to our training. Prof Ian MacDonald from New Zealand transited through Singapore and spent a fair bit of time teaching here. He and another Australian neurologist were part of the reasons why I ended up doing neurology.
Thanks to Prof MacDonald’s help, I spent time at Queen Square. He also arranged for me to join the laboratory of Prof Sir John Newsome Davies in Oxford for research.
THC: There is always a sense that neurologists are very strong mathematicians because the logic and the deductions of the neuroanatomical and neurophysiological pathways require sound systems thinking and logical thought processes. Would you agree with that? Were you also strong in mathematics?
DMS: I was actually good in mathematics [laughs]. That’s not my reason for entering neurology though. In neurology, and also in cardiology, a lot of it has to do with your analytical capability. Cardiology is, to a large extent, about physics, and neurology is a lot about understanding pathways and the ability to analyse and triangulate where a lesion actually is.
THC: Do you think that your experience and training as a neurologist contributes to your role as DMS?
DMS: I would say yes for a number of reasons. It’s a specialty where you need plenty of solutions. The fact that a lot of the neurological conditions are disabling meant that you had to understand the social fabric of the patients and the wider community. Placement for patients was something you had to explore as a neurologist. If you did not learn to interact with nurses, therapists and social workers, the patients would not go home. So you had to learn to manage all aspects of care from the very beginning.
Another factor has to do with the fact that many neurological conditions did not have solutions in terms of treatments that worked. So it lent itself a lot more to one being more directly involved in the whole phase of discovery or being involved in working out diagnostic algorithms, which then became part of the mainstream clinical pathways. Much of neurology is still not clear, and the field of dementia is one example.
Healthcare challenges
THC: With Singapore’s outstanding healthcare system and reputation, what are some of the big challenges moving forward? Last year, the War on Diabetes was highlighted, and so was the silver tsunami and rising healthcare costs. Are these the big button questions?
DMS: I would say yes. We are successful because our life expectancy is now longer. For women, it’s getting close to 85 and for men it’s just over 80 now. However, it’s not just how long you live, but also your health adjusted life expectancy that matters. For women, it’s near the age of 75, for men, it’s just gone over 70. Measure that against your life expectancy, and you will be looking at the number of years of disability that you will experience at that particular phase of life. With the ageing population and the shrinking birth rate that we have, the reduced number of potential workers in the country forms a challenge. We have to change some of our perspectives and mindsets pertaining to what ageing means. We used to say someone who was in his or her 50s was old, then it became 60s, and now we say being in the early 70s is still young. We see many older people who are still well and the configuration of healthcare has to change.
We are demographically leaning more towards patients who have chronic debilitating conditions. The War on Diabetes singles out one of the three major chronic conditions, known as the “DHL”: Diabetes, Hypertension and Lipids. We are not just interested in diabetes alone, but diabetes gives us a way to address chronic disease – as a whole system, whole Government and whole country. While the Government can do a lot, the idea is to galvanise us as a population, to be partners because no one wants to be spending their time going for dialysis, or ending up with an amputation and dependent on a personal mobility device. We want the population to be healthy for as long as possible, so the plan is to prevent or to delay complications. Improving treatment is downstream while improving health is upstream. That aspect of it is always a partnership between us and the patients.
Then there is the issue of rising healthcare costs. If your focus is on nothing but rescue treatment, which is what most acute care is about, you’re increasingly shifting your rescue treatment to individuals who are further along the course of disease and your returns diminish, compared to when we go upstream to help individuals stay healthy for longer.
THC: Are there models of long-term care in other countries that have impressed you in areas such as supporting the elderly and managing chronic diseases?
DMS: I don’t think there’s a single model that impresses, but countries that have ageing populations like ours give us at least an idea of the direction in which we ought to go. Japan is one example; they also have resource constraints, an ageing population and a poor ratio of live births to the aged. These are similar issues with ours. The UK is also older than we are, and they have given us some ideas on managing healthcare for an ageing population. Many of the Scandinavian countries deal with healthcare very differently from us. They are much less hospital-heavy and more community care-heavy, with very few hospital beds. Though they have a significant number of healthcare professionals, they are mostly community-based. You can visit one of their polyclinics and find it quite empty, because they do a lot more non-clinic-based type of care. This is quite interesting because we are still very much inpatient- and clinic-attendance-based here.
THC: Would you say there is a cultural dimension to this? Is there more of an active ageing culture in Scandinavia and Japan compared to us?
DMS: In Japan, people don’t seem to think much of working even when they’re older, and they help each other as a community. People in their 60s will help those in their 70s, and someone in his/her 70s will help someone in the 80s. I think we have to increasingly encourage Singaporeans to do the same. Scandinavians are a lot more independent than we are. They will do a lot more things on their own, whereas here, we are more dependent on others and on external support such as picking up the litter and taking out our trash. In Scandinavia, it’s a lot more of self-help.
THC: In the UK National Health Service (NHS), support systems are under a lot of stress especially for the medical care of the elderly. Are we adequately preparing ourselves to look after an increasingly older population, especially when it appears that UK is nearly crumbling under the weight of the silver tsunami?
DMS: I would say that we are preparing for that. We are just starting but at least we have the opportunity to see how we can better do that. We have been investing quite a lot more in the spaces outside of the hospital. Take nursing homes for example, the spaces in them have increased, as well as home-related community-based care. We have added community hospital capacity and started to build up the ability to deal with medical health in the community. Also, we have started to more actively engage with GPs, bringing them on board to help us with chronic disease care. We are also building more polyclinic capacity. We are still building hospitals, which, to me, can create a bit more of a challenge for us in the time going forward.
THC: Being a leader in healthcare, what are your visions and hopes for Singapore’s healthcare in the future?
DMS: I’m going to go a little more aspirational. I hope that Singaporeans will be healthier and less in need of healthcare as a country, and that we, as healthcare professionals, will be better partners in order to achieve that. While I think that the need for doctors, nurses and allied health professionals will not go away, I believe that our relationship will be slightly different as we cast our minds forward to the future. A lot of things would be more community-delivered, rather than the overwhelming need for an individual to go to hospital. But I hope that our population can be healthier and hopefully eating healthier and exercising more automatically.
Medical training
THC: Now, on to training and residency! Structured teaching, good teacher-to-student ratio, and more supervision, oversight and feedback are the various strengths of the US-styled residency. Yet, along the way, even local healthcare leaders have said that the implementation has been less than ideal, and that we need to tweak the process and maybe even abandon it. Some also questioned the switch to a system that is harder to transplant and implement into a busy local culture, and not recognised by the American residency board when we had a world-class British medical training system before. What are your thoughts on this?
DMS: The residency system was put in place in 2010 so it has been about eight years now. As you rightly pointed out, the residency system aimed to do a few key things. Number one was to put structure to the curriculum and number two was to make teaching, and the supervision of teaching, more transparent and accountable. At that time, the Ministry looked into a number of potential jurisdictions, including the UK’s, to see whether there was a way in which we could modernise and improve the training of doctors.
When they looked at the various internationally reputable systems, the one with the best structure to adapt then was the American system. In fact, our British colleagues were also looking into revamping their own medical training system due to the issues with their existing system. They only came up with the new system with the revision of the Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training system recently, just before I came into the MOH.
When I came on board, we did the first review of our residency programme. The review committee then felt that it was too early for us to make a lot of specific changes, though they did make some important recommendations that we have already put in place.
Firstly, they agreed that medical students should not go directly into a specialty straight away. There were a number of reasons behind this decision. The students might not be ready to make a choice – there was no work-based evaluation of their capabilities or how they dealt with patients. More importantly, it was a statutory requirement, under our Medical Registration Act (MRA), that one underwent the postgraduate year one (PGY1). In view of that, the training of doctors now cannot start until after PGY1. However, you cannot implement that straight away because you have people in flight; so it will kick in in totality by next year. So, by and large, it means that we will have at least a year and two workplace-based assessments, instead of assessing potential residents purely by their examination results.
Secondly, they recommended that we better contextualise the training. We have been working together with the Residency Advisory Committees (RACs), Joint Committees on Specialist Training (JCSTs) and the Americans to do this going forward. The idea of this system being one where the Americans are charged with certifying our doctors and specialists is actually a misconception.
THC: Oh, really?
DMS: We are the ones who certify. What they accredit is the programme. The system of certification and the determination of whether a person is a specialist are still done by the Specialist Accreditation Board (SAB), Singapore. We are accountable for that but the SAB looks to the JCST to confirm that the curriculum content, examinations and evaluations indicate that the candidate is ready before the SAB considers certification. That hasn’t changed. Some people might think that they are doing the residency system for the Americans, but that is not the case. We are training doctors for Singapore.
DMS: Another point I would add is the issue of training throughput. The residency system does mean that training throughput can be more closely managed, but it also has to respond to the needs of the hospitals and our Singapore populace. Many of our young medical students and doctors have aspirations to be medical oncologists, surgeons or some other specific specialty, but in essence, we must always look at what the country needs and our earlier discussion spoke about those needs. Thus, we should encourage young doctors and medical students to think about how they can address those needs. If you start out life saying that you want to be a doctor, you start out expressing the fact that you want to help. You shouldn’t be going into it just for your own needs.
THC: On the ground, some doctors are griping about how policymakers said, a few years ago, that “we do not have enough specialists”, yet now they say “we have too many specialists; we encourage you to become a generalist”. Did they get the mathematics wrong initially?
DMS: The incubation period for a doctor is long, and I think it’s important for us to bear in mind that when we talk about specialty and specialist, we do still need specialists. What is changing, based on what we discussed earlier, is the kind of specialists we need. It is important to bear that in mind. While I do not think that we have over provided yet, we may face a situation where we have relative excess in certain areas versus others, if we do not make some adjustments to the choices people make now. But in some areas of training, we have always been relatively short. And those areas are the ones where we have the greatest needs. For example, when I was younger, departments of internal medicine were dominant. But what we need now are people who can be organisers, who can be broader in capabilities and yet have expertise as specialists. So we should look into those more seriously and hope that more people will be interested in areas where we have needs – specifically geriatrics, internal medicine and palliative care. Will we still need a person who is extremely talented in a medical or surgical procedure? Yes, we do.
THC: I guess it means fewer opportunities for those interested in the more popular specialties.
DMS: It will be more competitive.
THC: Your daughters are in medicine. How does their generation of doctors feel about the current situation of medical training and future career options?
DMS: I didn’t influence my children’s university or career choices, although they did ask me about whether they should go into medical school. Like most dads, I said: “please be careful, because it’s not exactly what you think it is. You are going into a line of service. It is very easy to be discouraged if you don’t have the right perspective. When you go into the line of service, no one is going to thank you; you go in with the heart to serve. In general, if you keep that perspective in mind, things will pan out well for you.” The elder one chose to do internal medicine. It was fine with me. I advised her to do advanced internal medicine or geriatrics but she chose to do something else. The other one chose a more procedural specialty.
THC: And one is studying music.
DMS: That’s my eldest.
The healthcare landscape
THC: The Health Manpower Development Plan (HMDP) is another elephant in the room for our doctors-in-training. The general feeling is that it is harder to get an overseas HMDP fellowship today. One rationale heard is that since Singapore is already so strong in many areas of medicine, there is no need to send doctors overseas for subspecialty training. Another factor is that a trainee might get headhunted with attractive offers by the private sector after completing a HMDP fellowship, thus resulting in a loss to the public health service.
DMS: For HMDP, the aims have not changed, but a doctor’s perspective towards it may have. The HMDP is a fund set aside by the Ministry to develop doctors in specific areas of national need. It is not for doctors to use for personal development alone but to serve a need of the wider healthcare system. It was designed essentially for people who have not only completed their training but have gained enough post-training experience on the ground to at least understand the broad needs of their specialties. That way, when they go overseas, the context of practice is a bit easier for them to apply. Otherwise, they may pick up a model of care that is not easy to translate locally. When we asked the review committee then to look at it and see how best we could utilise the monies, we asked them whether the need still existed and their answer was “yes”. Then we asked them how we could determine what to fund and that is where the difference lies. Because in previous years, and I think we still want this to happen, it was left to the individual clusters of public healthcare institutions to administer the process. This was because we felt that they would better know what their developmental needs are to provide services within their institution. They were, however, supposed to take reference, even then, from what we referred to as the Specialist Training Committees, now RACs. This helped them to determine what the national needs may be.
Taking my field for example, one emerging area for cerebrovascular disease is intervention. So increasingly, you need people to do rescue for people who have strokes beyond the recombinant tissue plasminogen activator timeline. We currently do not have enough people in that field. So if you ask if I will support someone to go for HMDP after he/she has done sufficient years in stroke management for that aspect, the answer is “yes” – because it is going to be needed on a national level. But do I need to send someone overseas to do exactly what Prof Tan Eng King or Prof Lo Yew Long are currently already doing? I would say less likely.
THC: For HMDP, one intangible outcome is soft power and networking. That kind of international network and connectivity is very hard to achieve if you don’t send these trainees abroad.
DMS: That’s true, but not every one of them builds networks though, only some do. In essence, the networks are actually important and network building continues even after you finish your HMDP. But in order to be able to build networks, you must first earn the respect of the people you work with. Thus, I think it is important for Singaporeans, with Singapore being so small, to have an ability to look outside to build what’s within. That goes back to the first point, you see. HMDP is to develop capabilities for Singapore, not for oneself. If doctors look at those networks to further themselves, then it’s a separate issue altogether again.
THC: Another elephant in the room is the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR). Healthcare workers do believe that it’s generally a good thing, but there have been vocal concerns. One is that the NEHR could end up as a data dump of huge amounts of slightly disorganised, unfiltered information. Even where security mechanisms exist, insurance companies can still somehow find patient information and use it against a potential insured. What’s your comment about that?
DMS: To start, the NEHR is not a huge unorganised dump. It enables an individual to navigate the system regardless of where he/she is. It is important particularly for chronic disease management and acute emergent care. Is there always a potential for abuse of any electronic data set, the answer is “yes”. The issue is with safeguarding it. Safeguarding doesn’t happen just because you advise people not to upload information. If an employer wants your medical background, it is because he/she is concerned with whether or not you will be fit for the job. Let’s assume that that’s the main reason for wishing to obtain medical information, and not because he/she is not willing to pay for your insurance and existing medical costs. If you, as an employee, hold back information, I would wonder whether I should employ you. Let’s say you’re applying for a job that potentially puts other people’s lives at risk, and you choose to conceal a medical condition – that becomes an issue.
When you buy life insurance, you have to make a declaration. I’m sure that as a doctor, you have been asked by your patients to write medical reports. So that is not going to be any different. Insurance companies will not be able to access the information. The real question is whether a doctor who is doing the evaluation and has access to NEHR can use that data. I have my personal perspective on how we should handle that but it’s best left to the consultation to sort this out. I think the system exists essentially for healthcare data sharing. When I see patients in the clinic, I find it very difficult if I am unable to see what my colleagues in primary care were inputting for this same patient.
THC: What about confidentiality on the NEHR? If an unmarried 45-year-old lady who has a history of psychiatric disorder confides fully in her psychiatrist, she may be extremely anxious about her primary care physician, or dermatologist who’s seeing her for just a simple skin condition, knowing all about her psychiatric history.
DMS: Even now, if an individual has a condition that’s deemed sensitive, doctors in general have been advocates for patients’ interests and will need specific reasons for unlocking the information. So while the information may be available in the system, a doctor will have to specifically request for access to the information and that kind of request is audited. If one is found to have accessed it for the wrong reasons, there are serious consequences, since he/she would probably have behaved unethically. As long as we remember what we have promised to do, when we work under the guidelines of the MRA and follow the Singapore Medical Council Ethical Guidelines and Ethical Code, I don’t think we will run afoul.
On a personal level
THC: Thank you for your insights into so many important areas. Moving on from medicine and work, what are some fond memories of your own medical student life?
DMS: I stayed on this campus, in the Sepoy Lines King Edward (KE) VII hostel, throughout my five years of medical studies. This campus was, in a sense, my medical school home. What was fun about it was that when you’re part of a community on campus all the time, you get to know your colleagues very well. Medical school classes were smaller then, so you knew people five years your senior, as well as five years your junior. There are people you learn to stay away from and people who become your fast friends for life. They could be many years your senior or junior. Additionally, life was easier and simpler in those days, and we had fewer distractions.
THC: In what sense?
DMS: Recreation was, if we had some money, the movies. Otherwise, it was playing tennis, sepak takraw or billiards. Alternatively, it was walking down to Tiong Bahru to eat some unhealthy food.
THC: So the Tiong Bahru Market was already there at that time?
DMS: It was a lot more interesting in those days.
THC: How was it more interesting? What did they sell?
DMS: There was a very unhealthy chicken rice place and a sliced fish noodle place that was very nice. There was also a very tasty chee cheong fun stall. You could walk down from our KE VII hostel, to the back of where the MOH is now, where there’s a car park and then there’s this field where the helicopter lands. It was a short walk to get down to Tiong Bahru Market from there.
Aside from that, the few of us who had a driving licence but couldn’t afford a car became drivers for the hall. We would actually drive to eat at different parts of Singapore and to also go for various college-related games. That part of it was also interesting – being involved in college life.
What I think was quite meaningful from my standpoint was the fact that once you got into the clinics as a clinical student, you were treated almost like a member of staff. Partially because there were so few of us; with very few seniors, registrars and medical officers, you became useful very quickly.
THC: Sounds like a battlefield promotion.
DMS: And you got to do a lot more things. They supervised you, they kept an eye on you, but they entrusted you with a lot more.
THC: I have also learnt that you were a very important member of the KE VII hostel’s band, with Leslie Kuek and others.
DMS: I wasn’t a very important member. They just needed a pianist in the band. It was a rather noisy rock band!
THC: What’s the name of the band?
DMS: It’s just the KE Hall band.
THC: What kind of music did you play?
DMS: We played what was considered to be popular music in those days. I’m not certain that we played very well. It’s just that we played rather loud [laughs].
THC: Who was your vocalist in that band?
DMS: Anyone who was daring enough to sing. I cannot remember who the vocalist was anymore. I just remember that the drummer, Leslie Kuek would sing.
THC: I was told you were very close to him.
DMS: I still am. I have known him since Secondary 1.
THC: Who are the mentors and role models who have inspired you?
DMS: Of course Prof Seah Cheng Siang was one of them. He was an extremely astute physician and a very good diagnostician. Did you know that he trained in neurology, even though he eventually entered gastroenterology? In some ways, my interest in the analytical capability came from watching him as the master-clinician. He took an interest in me for some reason, but he was strict. Another thing I learnt was how much he loved learning and how much he enjoyed teaching.
Then there was Prof Chan Heng Leong, who was then the NUH/NUS department head. Prof Chan probably helped me the most in my career development. He taught me many things about clinical teaching and how to run examinations. Earlier, I mentioned the late Prof Ian MacDonald. My first clinical teacher was actually Prof Lim Pin. I didn’t actually see him much again until much later, when he came back to NUHS as a senior physician. At that time, I had just become a department head so I used to discuss certain difficult issues with him. Thus, in terms of guidance in leadership, he too, played a part in my professional life.
And then I had a whole school of people, who taught me curricular, including Prof Chia Boon Lock, a giant in cardiology. I am fortunate because I was put in an academic environment where doctors had a bit more time to sit down with me and talk things through. I also had very good colleagues, who were often older than I was, who were there to guide and to counsel sometimes when I was over-enthusiastic about something. They would support the enthusiasm but they would give me sage advice about how to approach things. That also helped. Throughout my career, I’ve always had individuals whom I could always look to, talk to and turn to. And now, even though my principal supervisors like Prof MacDonald have passed on, the people who were with me in the research labs in Oxford are still close to me. I still see them on and off and I try to pop by to visit them. Some of them still get involved in the teaching circuit so I get to see them around.
THC: Do you think we are going to lose the master-clinician ethos that was so powerful in the old days?
DMS: I hope we don’t ever lose master-clinicians. Master-clinicians of this day and age have to be different from those days. We are using technology a lot more, as compared to those days; you can’t run away from that. But that doesn’t substitute for a number of things that I think are always going to be important. One is the empathy and compassion that you need to show because, after all, you’re dealing with people who are hurting or in need. You still need astuteness to interpret the information as well. You could do three or four scans, but the information that it gives you may not help if the scans look normal while the patient is still hurting. So you still need to be able to make that decision on the ground, whether that is something that we need to deal with or not.
THC: When I was a medical student in the UK, the neurology professor always had a red pin and a white pin. And then the carnation on the lapel of the neurologist’s suit!
DMS: I don’t know about the carnation, but I still have the red pin. We risk losing the clinical touch and acumen if we jump to employing technology as an investigational tool straight away. One should always still talk to the patient thoroughly. Certain things need to change; we don’t have to keep repeating the history again and again. I also don’t think that the information that we pull from the different evaluations should be additive. But this additional technology and diagnostic aid can help us to be a lot more accurate in our diagnosis and treatment. The discussions these days in hospital grand rounds are quite different. It’s a lot more molecular and granular. But if you take a step back and look at it, so long as you don’t lose sight of the fact that this is an individual that you are talking about, whose life is in your hands, that’s fine. As doctors, with the privilege of being doctors and caring for people, we shouldn’t lose sight of that. We shouldn’t substitute it with a lot of the things that distract some of my colleagues.
THC: What do you do to relax and what are your pastimes?
DMS: When you get busy, you are not necessarily always productive – that’s the important thing to bear in mind. You have to schedule in time to do the things that are important. You could consider noting down in your diary your various activities. You might think that what you spend most of your time on would be the most important thing to you, but they might turn out to be things that are not important in the long term. This is why I will always make time to spend with my wife.
THC: That’s sweet. Hopefully she reads the interview. [laughs]
DMS: It is not easy, because she has a busy schedule too.
THC: Is she also a doctor?
DMS: No, she’s a retired lawyer. We try to have dinner together and talk so that I wouldn’t look at my work. That’s something that I set aside time for. If my grown-up children are around, that’s wonderful! We try to have useful discussions with them. I enjoy sports, so I still get out and I’ll go to the gym or go on walks. Occasionally, I’d play squash. I think my golfing skill is rapidly disappearing. Of course, I have an interest in music, so I still listen to music.
THC: What kind of music do you listen to? If you’re going to a desert island, what music would you bring with you?
DMS: It’s a mixture of things, including Romantic classics. I also like jazz, because improvisation interests me, and Christian music.
THC: I hear that your son is a very talented musician. Is he working in the US?
DMS: Yes. He’s chosen to compose for some movies in Los Angeles and for Hollywood.
THC: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much once again for spending this time with us for SMA News sharing your insights and wisdom.