I have been involved in the running of various medical professional bodies in the past 30 years, and I have observed many leaders of these organisations. There are some who take up a post because, well, the post is available. There are those that take up the job because they were asked to. There are also a few who appear to be attracted to the allure of the pomp and pageantry that comes with the post. Yet there are others who feel that the post is yet another feather in their cap of a very illustrious career; there is almost an air of inevitability about the entire affair.
And then there are those who want to lead a medical professional body because they wanted to do something with and through that leadership position and, in doing so, change the organisation and the people they led. They have a vision of what should be and what the organisation could achieve. Such leaders are few and far in between. Cheong Pak Yean belongs to this category.
My association with A/Prof Cheong Pak Yean spanned about 30 years, from the day I first joined SMA as a Council member fresh after housemanship in 1995. I was the Honorary Secretary of SMA throughout the period he was the President (1996 to 1999). I worked most closely with him and had the good fortune to observe and learn from him. He was a relatively young President when he assumed the post at 46 years old and I was an incredibly young Honorary Secretary (28 years old); this was before the age of emails and WhatsApp. We spent many hours working closely together over countless evenings and weekends to ensure SMA and its activities ran smoothly.
I will not delve on his many achievements as a doctor. But instead, I shall try to focus on the man himself – as if that were even possible, because he was a multifaceted man.
He was a strategist
He thought far ahead and often saw the need for things well before others did. The SMA Centre for Medical Ethics and Professionalism (SMA CMEP) was set up in 2000, but the idea came from him when he was SMA President and the seeds for SMA CMEP were sowed in the late nineties. He saw the need for SMA to focus on ethics and professionalism. Today, all residents have to take the medical ethics course organised by the SMA CMEP, and it is a one of the three key providers of the mandatory medical ethics continuing medical education activities.
He was a risk taker
He took a risk with a bunch of young doctors to drive his agenda. That included not just me, but also other junior doctors in those days, such as Drs Wong Tien Yin, Tan Sze Wee, Yue Wai Mun and Goh Jin Hian. We were placed in important positions, and we drove several key initiatives. It was during his term of office as President that the SMA Medical Officers Committee managed to get the Ministry of Health (MOH) to see our point that allowances for junior doctors should be raised. This culminated in MOH paying house officers on-call allowance for the first time and a significant hike in on-call allowances for medical officers.
A master educator bar none
He left a huge imprint on Singapore healthcare through training and education that few realise today.
He told me many times that education and training was about "filling the troughs and raising the peaks" – one should first fill the troughs (ie, gaps in knowledge and skills) and after that, raise the peaks.
Filling the troughs
Without him as one of the chief curriculum developers, there may be no SMA Clinic Assistant Place and Train Programme as we know today. Throughout the years, thousands of clinic assistants have gone through the clinic assistant course. Today, there are also several other institutions and healthcare providers that run such courses. However, the first curriculum was developed by SMA in collaboration with the Institute of Technical Education and he was a key driver of this project.
He was also the visionary who saw the need for vocational training to produce large numbers of competent family physicians (FPs). He conceptualised and developed the Graduate Diploma for Family Medicine (GDFM) when he realised that the academic track of Master of Medicine (MMed) and Fellowship of the College of Family Physicians (FCFP) could not possibly produce the large numbers of FPs that Singapore required. The beauty of it all was that the GDFM vocational training could also progress on to the academic track for MMed and did not lead into a blind alley with no hope of further progression. The large numbers of primary care physicians with GDFM ensures that Healthier SG programmes can be introduced and operationalised in the community today without serious medical manpower bottlenecks.
Raising the peaks
He was one of the main driving forces behind the FCFP programme offered by the College of Family Physicians Singapore (CFPS). Just as he saw the need to "fill the troughs" with the GDFM, he also saw the opportunity to "raise the peaks" of family medicine (FM) with the FCFP programme, to use CFPS and the FCFP programme to produce a new elite core of FM leaders to bring the discipline forward onto higher ground. Today, the FCFP qualification is also recognised by the Academy of Medicine, Singapore (AMS) as the entry requirement for the Fellowship of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore for family physicians in Singapore. In doing so, AMS effectively recognises the FCFP as being comparable in rigour and quality to the exit qualifications for the specialties recognised by the Specialist Accreditation Board.
When asked to take up the post of Founding Chairman of the Chapter of Family Physicians (set up under the ambit of AMS for FPs with FCFP) in 2014, he readily agreed. I suppose he also saw the opportunity afforded by the setting up of this Chapter to once again raise the peaks of FM in Singapore.
The Z-axis master physician
Most of us, doctors, function on the XY-plane. Not content with this state of affairs, Cheong Pak Yean in his later years explored how to practise medicine on a different level, as though he was now practising on not only the XY-axes, but a third Z-axis as well.
Perhaps with more time on his hands after stepping down as President of CFPS in 2007, he also became interested in psychotherapy and took courses in it, becoming a certified psychotherapist. As described by his good friend and "partner in crime", A/Prof Goh Lee Gan, he developed a biopsychosocial approach to the practice of medicine in the last ten to 15 years.
He co-authored a book on getting the most out of a doctor-patient consultation, titled The Extended Consultation, now in its second edition. It is a must-read for FPs interested in raising the bar of their clinical practice. He also emphasised the importance of counselling in the doctor-patient relationship and co-authored the book Counselling within the Consultation.
Today, our medical schools offer courses and training in medical humanities. However, Cheong Pak Yean was ahead of the curve in this area once again, long before it was fashionable to do so. In his later years, he devoted much time to developing his ideas on this subject. The CFPS' 50th anniversary commemorative book which he co-edited, Being Human, is testament to his deep understanding and passion for this subject.
As one can see from the above, he was always on the move, never content with his professional skills, devoting himself to honing the art of medicine, even in his later years.
The IT pioneer
For as long as I had known him, Cheong Medical Clinic (the clinic he ran) always had an information technology (IT) system for patient registration, drug management, queue management, etc. He was an IT pioneer of sorts, when many clinics were still on pen and paper. He was never afraid of using technology and computers to augment his practice and make his (and his patients') life easier.
Recently, he did confide to me that he was considering retirement soon. He confessed that age was catching up with him and he did not enjoy staring at the computer screen for most of the patient encounter instead of having direct face-to-face interaction with his patients. He had come to see the almost mandatory requirement to use an electronic medical record (EMR) system as interfering and undermining what he treasured most – the practice of the art of medicine as encapsulated in the doctor-patient consultation.
I suppose when you put together what he enjoyed about medicine: medical humanities, counselling, psychotherapy, family medicine, and the EMR, then as the saying goes, "something's got to give". But if compromise is not on the cards, then retirement becomes a serious option.
I think my meagre efforts in this biographical obituary of sorts hardly does justice to a man of such breadth and depth in talent and influence on the medical profession.
His untimely passing reminds us that life is indeed fleeting, but the impact of a life well-lived lasts well beyond its mere physical existence.
I will always cherish my memories of Pak Yean as a good mentor and a dear friend.

Receiving the SMA Honorary Membership from then SMA President Dr Tan Yia Swam during the COVID-19 pandemic (2021)

Chairing the SMA Annual General Meeting (1996–1997) with then Honorary Secretary Dr Wong Chiang Yin

SMA 39th Council (1998–1999) photo when A/Prof Cheong was SMA President

A/Prof Cheong with A/Prof Goh Lee Gan (left) and Dr Wong Heck Sing at the 1997 SMA Lecture