Role-play for success

Dr Ken Chua Kai Yang has just finished a 12-hour shift at Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s general surgery department. Every day is a race against time for the young doctor. After getting home, the first thing he reaches for isn’t the shower, but his phone as he organises the next alumni volunteer event with his former classmates.

As the President of NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine) Alumni Association, Dr Chua takes the lead in organising events, seminars and other interesting activities for over 550 alumni to help them reconnect and establish new connections.

One alumni volunteer activity that has kept them busy in the past three years is providing mock exam guidance and mentorship to graduating classes of LKCMedicine to prepare them for the Objective Structured Clinical Examination.

Under the mentorship of faculty and seniors like Dr Ken Chua (front row, second from left), the 2022 graduate cohort excelled in their final exams and are now practising doctors.

During the actual exam, medical students are assessed on their clinical skills in a simulated clinical setting, to test their medical knowledge as well as communication, reasoning and decision-making skills, as well as their ability to handle patients who might display negative emotions. 

Six months before the mock exam, an organising committee of five to six alumni is formed to plan clinical scenarios and potential test questions. The scenario writing and content review takes two to three months before the test questions are sent to 20 alumni volunteers who would role-play as patient actors and examiners. They would then provide feedback to the juniors on their performance. 

Despite being busy doctors working in hospitals, the alumni sacrifice personal rest time and pour time and resources into role-playing and rehearsing with their juniors, wholeheartedly imparting their clinical experience. 

Dr Chua, a graduate of LKCMedicine’s second cohort, says: “Our senior batch took the time to guide us with informal teaching and mentoring, which helped many of us. This made me realise the importance of mentoring, especially in our field where medicine is as much of an art as it is a science. In appreciation of what our seniors did for us, I consciously try to do the same for my juniors too. The greatest challenge is coordinating everyone’s schedule for the two-day in-person session. Since we are working in different hospitals and postings, it is always encouraging to see alumni return year after year. It also helps that we have several peers mentoring a group of students so that the responsibility does not just lie with a single senior.”

On top of that, the Alumni Association also launched a new workshop to mentor and tutor the juniors this year. The Call to See Patients workshop, comprising lectures followed by a practical session, was conceptualised and organised with the goal of preparing the final-year students for their first work call in a hospital. 

Dean of NTU Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Prof Joseph Sung, remarks: “We are heartened that the Alumni Association goes to great lengths to plan detailed mock exams and workshops. The school has always put patient care at the heart of our educational philosophy. Alumni bring with them practical experience that medical undergraduates lack. Beyond textbook learning, undergraduates benefit immensely from their seniors to learn about bedside manners and tips on developing a positive doctor-patient relationship.”

Keeping the flame alive in volunteering

One of the juniors who has benefitted from the fruit of this mentoring effort is Dr Ian Koh (Class of 2022). Currently a House Officer at a hospital, Dr Koh says: “The mock exams proved to be essential when it came to preparing us for the actual stations. The well-crafted scenarios provided many insights into the standard expected of us as final-year students. It gave us a clear goal to work towards, and this certainly helped many of us perform better in the actual exam. The seniors also provided very constructive and immediate feedback which steered us in the right direction. I deeply appreciate the seniors for their time and effort, and hope that this will continue for future batches.” 

Given the demanding schedule of a young doctor on long hospital shifts, stepping up to volunteer is indeed taxing. Many alumni recognise the importance of giving back to the School, and so far, the group has managed to pull off the mock exams every year. 

“Mock scenarios and debrief sessions taught us how to prioritise and rule out critical conditions in a systematic way. We learnt how to consolidate knowledge from medical school into realistic scenarios. I found myself looking back gratefully on some of these approaches when i encountered similar situations at work.” said Dr Hannah Abbott, who graduated this year.

One of the alumni volunteers, Dr Reudi Chan (Class of 2020) a Medical Officer with the Navy Medical Service, explains: "Most of us volunteer for these sessions because we faced the same challenges when we first started work. We understand the feeling of uncertainty when we met our first acutely ill patient. My seniors imparted pearls of wisdom and practical advice to me, so now I see this as a way of paying it forward." 

Both Dr Chua and Dr Chan agree that in their capacity as medical professionals, they are involved in mentoring younger colleagues one way or another. Moreover, the juniors will graduate and work alongside them in the hospitals or polyclinics, so the alumni are just starting the mentoring relationship early. 

For alumni from other schools who are interested to start volunteering, Dr Chua advises them to find a group of like-minded alumni and start small with realistic goals. It is also important to get the support of faculty to align with their mission or contact the alumni engagement team at the University Advancement Office to link up with an existing alumni association.

Dr Chua points out the greatest reward for the alumni is seeing their juniors excel in their exams, and more importantly, doing well when they start work as junior doctors as they may end up as colleagues who need to work closely together.

He adds: "It is always nice to know we played a part in helping someone graduate as a caring and competent junior doctor."

This article first appeared in issue 2 of U, the NTU alumni magazine.