The 2006 Dentist's Pledge Affirmation Ceremony

14 Jul 2006

By Ms Yong Ying-I, Permanent Secretary (Health)

Venue: MOH Auditorium , College of Medicine Building

Dr Yip Wing Kong, President, Singapore Dental Council

Members of the Dental Council

Newly registered dentists and your families

Ladies and Gentlemen

I am pleased to be here this evening with our young dentists at your Pledge Affirmation ceremony. I congratulate you on your graduation from dental school which is a big milestone for you and for your families. The Pledge that you will be taking today to mark your entry into your new career is equally significant.

As a non-medical professional myself, I am especially struck by the symbolism of making a pledge that doctors and dentists are required to do before they begin their careers. One does not have to make a pledge before one becomes a banker, an IT engineer or a departmental store executive. This emphasizes the special nature of the healthcare profession:

The Pledge speaks of nobility of purpose in your profession, to do good. It speaks of a particular responsibility and accountability that you have to your customers, because they know less than you and they trust you to care for them. And it speaks of the importance of ethos, of personal values to guide the choices you make.

I therefore hope that the Pledge that you recite today will be done thoughtfully, and that it will have a lasting influence on the way you practice, and guide your professional decisions every day of your careers.

Business winds of change -- SingaporeMedicine

You are joining the dental profession at a very exciting time as Singapore is poised to grow and transform our healthcare sector to be an international medical hub treating patients from around the world. Today, our healthcare sector as a whole treats some 374,000 foreign patients, and our target is to triple this to 1 million foreign patients by 2012. So we are looking at a larger patient base with a wider range of needs and demands, including in dentistry. Having high standards, documenting them, and having the confidence to market them internationally will attract patients to seek treatment here. The larger patient base will allow us to strengthen our capabilities in individual areas of sub-specialties, enabling us to improve care to Singaporeans. The expanded registration of dentists should draw in foreign professionals which will add to the professional expertise in the different fields of dentistry including dental research. I look forward to the dental community here responding with excitement and feeling invigorated by this new opportunity, and that it will in turn spur the profession to greater heights.

Professional Integrity

An exciting business landscape can, however, mean many things. Many good and exciting things can happen, and so can bad things. What do I mean? Well, dentistry today has new innovative technologies which if applied correctly, will improve the quality of life for your patients. I believe that the pace of change will accelerate with SingaporeMedicine. But these same techniques, if applied unethically, can be a disservice to your patients. Precisely because of the environment of greater commercialisation, dentists can be tempted to over-prescribe, or to do unnecessary procedures and over-treat so as to earn more money. The patient knows much, much less than you, and he trusts you to care for him.

This is why the Pledge emphasizes ethos, responsibility, nobility of purpose? It is not just the technical skill, the specialised knowledge that you have learnt in dental school that will enable you to treat patients well. Particularly because you will be operating independently, you have a great deal of flexibility in the choices you make, for yourself and for your patient. As a registered dentist, you now leave behind the constant guidance and scrutiny of your professors during training. Pledge-taking is important because there is only so much that externally imposed laws, regulations and audits can achieve. In dentistry, choosing the right behaviour, the right ethics comes from within you. The Pledge reminds you of the moral and professional obligation to advise and deliver treatment in the best interest of your patients.

Communication

Let me also say a few words about service skills on the job. In my job at MOH, I see a lot of complaints about our healthcare professionals. In the vast majority of cases, it is not about gaps in professional skills. It is almost always about poor communication skills. The treatment was excellent, but the patient didn't understand what the dentist was explaining to him. Patients sometimes complain that they were misled in terms of bill sizes, the result of the treatment or indeed how much government subsidy they could get.

So to be an excellent dentist, you will need both strong professional skills and good communications skills. This includes meeting and managing patients' expectations, particularly with the better-informed patients of today. The art of practising dentistry goes beyond the patient's physical well being, and involves building the patient's confidence and trust in you. It is vital that you provide adequate information for your patients to make informed choices, including being upfront on bill sizes. And with all service jobs, patience and empathy can go a long way towards preserving the high regard that our dentists are held in.

Continuing Professional Development

I mentioned that you will be leaving behind the scrutiny of your professors. Please don't take that to mean that your learning also ends with the conferment of the dental degree or your postgraduate qualification. On the contrary, with the exciting and rapid advances in biomedical sciences today, treatments, tools and techniques will change. Lifelong learning is a mantra that the Singapore Government has been promoting tirelessly for everyone, be they cleaners, retail staff or IT engineers. It is all the more so for dentists and everyone else in the health sciences arena.

My Ministry and the Dental Council are amending the Dentists Act to include amongst other things Compulsory Continuing Professional Education (CPE) for Dentists, a new Dental Specialists Register and an expanded schedule of registration of dentists to accommodate more foreign trained dental graduates.

To inculcate lifelong professional upgrading to safeguard the interest of your patients and ensure currency of practice, the Singapore Dental Council will implement compulsory continuing professional education (CPE), similar to the medical doctors. You will be able to log on to the SDC website and track your CPE points through your on-line personal record of CPE activities. With the new Dental Specialist Register, there will be more opportunities to specialize. This Register will help the public to identify dentists with specialised skills and expertise in specific areas of dentistry.

Our public consultation showed that the majority of dental professionals who responded supported these two initiatives. It shows the shared enthusiasm of your community to pursue continual improvement. We are seeking further views and feedback on the draft bill, and I encourage all of you, especially our young dentists who are beginning their careers, to voice your opinions.

Closing

In closing, let me once again congratulate the newly-registered dentists. Welcome to the dental profession and I wish you many years of successful and fulfilling practice ahead.