Third spacing is the yet-to-be-defined space between cells and vessels, where fluid moves from one space to another.
"Third Spacing" – the podcast – makes space to explore important topics on the fringes of clinical medicine in Singapore. We aim to ask questions you never thought you could ask, and promise nuanced conversations about issues beyond the clinic that affect the lives of patients, to fill the gaps in the consciousness of doctors-to-be.
Medical school is a time of transformation in becoming a doctor. The paths beyond or surrounding medicine are wide and varied, yet often only known in retrospect, if known at all.
In Singapore, people who do the work of creating synapses across fields exist. Yet, their paths don't typically cross ours, or their layered stories aren't given the airtime to be told.
Medical education
Medical school is when we first get acquainted with the profession and community. In our first season, we talk to faculty members who keep the schools going and forge the path forward by breaking traditional boundaries. We also talk to intrepid students who took the path previously unknown, who in so doing created possibilities that didn't previously exist.
Medical humanities
Medicine is often described as a science and an art, but what does this really mean? The study and practice of the use of inter–disciplinary approaches – of the arts, the humanities and the social sciences – to comprehend and articulate the difficult and the intangible, and to make real, is known as the medical humanities. Humanity is inextricably tied to the use of science to help people combat illness.
In season two, we talk to academics and practitioners of the medical humanities with a budding presence in Singapore, and how it offers semblances of solutions to shape our healthcare to be human.
Medical school admissions
In season three, we talk to medical students who one might, at passing, dismiss as not having a shot at medical school beyond the one–dimensional stories. In this series, we aim to complicate the story: from one of personal resilience and overcoming "hardship" in a way that suggests uninhibited mobility, to one of what can be done on a systemic scale such that their stories do not have to be told in the first place.
You can listen to our podcast episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Find out more at https://thirdspacing.com, and Instagram @thirdspacing.
In September, look out for Third Spacing's episodes with Dr Tan Yia Swam, President of SMA and Dr Chong Yeh Woei, Director of the SMA Charity Fund.