This is my final President's Forum article. It has been an intellectually challenging yet fulfilling journey. I had set out to write one 1,200-word article a month, not including the texts for annual reports and numerous speeches and presentations, over the three years as SMA President.
The material and topics I have touched on have been diverse, ranging from matters of profession and practice, medical ethics and the medical community, to how doctors think. The list of topics by subject matter is appended for your easy reference. (see page 11)
I would like to sincerely thank the SMA News editorial team for their constant support, gentle reminders and editorial reviews. Sarah, Sylvia and Jo-Ann have been supporting me throughout the past three years and have helped transform some of my lengthy sentence structures into eloquent prose.
I would also like to thank my wife, Hwee Hwee, who supported me throughout these three years as SMA President. She listened patiently to my ideas, helped me sharpen my thoughts to come up with new perspectives on the subject matter and diligently read through my drafts to offer her invaluable insights.
Dr Kevin Loy has been my long-time friend from secondary school (Anglo-Chinese School), through junior college (Anglo-Chinese Junior College) and National University of Singapore (NUS) Medicine. We were the illustrators for our NUS Medicine VAGUS magazine, class of 1993. He has been providing us with illustrations to accompany the monthly President's Forum articles.
Equipment wise, he currently uses a Wacom Cintiq 13-inch graphics tablet for most of his drawings, and has recently been doodling with his newly purchased iPad Pro and iPad Pencil as well. With the help of Procreate on the iPad and Adobe Photoshop on the computer to sketch and touch up on the pictures, the workflow is fully digitised, and saves him a lot of time during the illustration process. Often, he would read my draft article and propose a cartoon based on the theme or an idea. We then bounce concepts around and he modifies the drafts as we decide on the final illustration. Below are some snapshots of the creation process.
With that, I bid our readers farewell and thank you all for your continuous support of the Association and SMA News.