Public health medicine training in singapore

Abstract

Public health as a discipline is difficult to characterize because it has to respond to changes in human societies. As such, public health training has two dimensions - (1) Orientation and (2) Competencies. Our orientation should be broad and multidisciplinary to keep "alive the idea of improving the public health as a primary value". On the other hand, competencies define our professional status and role, which are focused mainly on our work on status of health, surveillance and disease control, health services and their evaluation. The core competencies can be organized according to the following categories: (1) Epidemiologic, (2) Programme based, (3) Laboratory-based and (4) Practice-based. The Singapore Programme is a 6-year post-intern medical training, with core components and electives clustered around 2 themes: (1) Health Policy and Management, (2) International Health.