Dear Fellows,

The 48th Annual General Meeting was held smoothly on 6 June 2026 at the Academia in Outram Campus.

I wish to put on record my gratitude to the outgoing Council Members who have stepped down after rendering valuable service. A heartfelt thank you to:

• William Hwang (Elected Council Member and Haematologist),

• Leo Yee Sin (Elected Council Member, Infectious Disease and Public Health Physician),

• Doric Wong (Nominated Council Member and President, College of Ophthalmologists, Singapore),
• Gan Wee Hoe (Nominated Council Member and President, College of Public Health & Occupational Physicians)

I also would like to extend our welcome to the following newly elected and appointed Council Members:

• Abdul Razakjr bin Omar (Elected Council Member, Cardiologist)
• Reuben Soh Chee Cheong (Elected Council Member, Orthopaedic Surgeon)
• Brian See Cheong Yan (Appointed Council Member, Occupational Medicine Practitioner)
• Gavin Tan Siew Wei (Appointed Council Member, Ophthalmologist)
  

I am confident that they will provide the Council with fresh perspectives and energy.

Listening to our Fellows and Members: 2025 Membership Survey

AMS conducted a Membership Survey between 18 November 2025 and 15 January 2026. The findings are released now (Click here)

There were 430 responses to the Survey, which is about 10% of total membership. It may seem a bit low, but from my experience this figure is not too far off for surveys of this nature and the responses provided a valuable pulse-check on how we are doing.

About two-thirds of response were from public sector specialists while one-third were from the private sector: this is roughly in line with the national distribution for the specialist community in Singapore.

Each question was given five possible responses which can be roughly classified as strongly positive, positive, neutral, negative and strongly negative.

A Closer Look at Value

One question stood out particularly to me: How would you rate the overall value of your membership? The responses were: 12% found it “Very Good”; 36% responded “Good”, and a significant 40% found the value to be only “Acceptable” while 10% found AMS membership to be of “Poor” value and another 1.5% responded “Very Poor”.

Adding up the first two “positive” categories gave a total of 48%. In other words, slightly less than half of the respondents found AMS membership to be of “Good” or “Very Good” value. This is a statistically sobering number that requires some measure of introspection.

As I have said before in a previous post, we need to deliver value. Value not just in dollars and cents or from the AMS leadership’s perception, but value from the fellows and members’ perspective.

Engagement and Perceived Importance

Another interesting Survey finding is that 26% of respondents attended three or more AMS/College/Chapter-organised events or activities in the past year; 57% attended one or two events while 16.5% did not attend any event. We will need to work on getting these attendance figures up by organising more events and activities that are better attended. After all, a simple proxy for value is whether we organise enough activities that are well-attended.

Other way of looking at value is to see what fellows and members think of the work we do. Do they find this type of work or activities “Extremely Important” or “Important” as opposed to “Important”, “Not So Important” and “Not at all Important”?

Type of Work	Percentage of Responses “Extremely Important” and “Important”
Advocacy Work (E.g. Recent letter to MAS Chairman on Integrated Shield Plans)	74
Setting professional standards by developing guidelines, consensus statements, advisories etc	84
Organising CME and MME activities	86
Promoting interests of specialties and subspecialties through the formation of Colleges, Chapters and Sections under AMS	80

Other than these four areas of work, none of the other activities that were surveyed crossed the 80% mark.

Bridging Value and Activism

It must be pointed out that these areas of work that are deemed to be of the highest importance have to be initiated, performed and led by us Fellows, with good administrative support from AMS staff. There is no getting around this fact: the Academy and the various Colleges and Chapters under its umbrella, is formed by Fellows, for Fellows and led by Fellows.

Three further questions in the Survey point to a certain disjunction in what is deemed to be of high value and who will initiate and lead these same high-value activities.

Three questions garnered less than 50% responses collectively for “Extremely Important” and “Important”:

• The right to propose or second candidates to become fellows/members (43%)
• The right to nominate fellows for election at Academy/College/Chapter Council elections (48%)
• Opportunity to serve as a Council/Board Member of the Academy/College/Chapter (42%)
  

This is somewhat troubling because it suggests that while many of us recognise and desire the outcomes of a vibrant Academy, fewer are willing to step forward to lead, to do the work, or to champion others to do so.

I think we can all agree that we want an active Academy/College/Chapter that delivers value. This entails a certain amount of activism on the part of its leaders and members. But if few people want to contribute to this activism, whether from the top-down or bottom-up, then it will be very difficult to deliver that value that we desire. This is the nature of a professional guild like the Academy – its dynamism and relevance hinges on the active participation of its members.

In this my second and final term of two years as your Master, the Council and I will try our very best to move the Academy forward based on the valuable feedback you have given in the Membership Survey. The Survey findings are not just data points but a call for all of us to refresh the Academy with a renewed sense of purpose and activism.

Thank you.

Dr Wong Chiang Yin

Master

Academy of Medicine, Singapore