Kelvin Teo
Medical students strolling in a hospital
In training to be a future doctor, a typical medical student go through a pre-clinical stage of his education which involves studying the science of medicine. During this stage, he familiarises himself with the underlying processes of how the body works, and perturbations that affect the body’s functions, and result in diseases. He also learns of how certain drugs work in the treatment of various illnesses and diseases.
The later years of a medical school syllabus will be the clinical years in which the student gets attached to hospital, and spend time learning the ropes of medical care pertinent to different sub-disciplines within medicine. Hence, the student will spend a certain period of time in the General Surgery department of a hospital to acquire knowledge and skills required of a general surgeon, and move on to the General Medicine department acquiring knowledge and skills required of a physician, and go on to the hospital’s Emergency Department to acquire the knowledge and skills of an emergency medicine physician, moving next to the Department of Psychiatry to acquire theoretical and practical insights within the discipline of psychiatry, and so on.
Some tertiary institutions have a “sandwich year” that requires student to undergo industrial attachment with a company. It is some sort of internship if you like. The main aim is for the students to pick up practical work experience and build up industrial connections before graduation.
How can the medical school curriculum be applied to the way tertiary institutions conduct internships for their other undergraduate courses? Recall earlier that it was mentioned that medical students get rotated through different disciplines within medicine during their clinical years. Hence, the same can be applied for internships organised by tertiary institutions for their students – student perform internship rotations.
For example, a chemical engineering undergraduate who has up to six months to do internship can spend two months in a chemical waste processing industry, another two months in the petrochemical industry and the last two months in the pharmaceutical industry, especially in companies that manufacture small molecule drugs, i.e. drugs with small chemical structures.
It is the aim of every tertiary institution to equip their graduates with relevant skills to aid them in their career beyond. From encouraging students to read a diverse set of courses within the institution to arranging internships for them, it is hoped that such a curriculum will prepare students for their future careers.
Besides reading diverse courses, accruing work experience in diverse industries pertaining to one’s discipline will equip him with skills and knowledge that will be in demand by future employers. The student is also able to gain a wide network of connections in multiple industries through the entire course of his internship. Above all, an internship across diverse industries each of which belonging to a subset of discipline will allow him to discover the sub-discipline within his diploma or degree where his passion lies.
There is no reason why the medical school curriculum concept of requiring students to undergo rotations through different medical disciplines to gain knowledge and practical experience cannot be applied to degree and diploma programmes from other disciplines. Universities and polytechnics could do more to assist students by forging close ties with a large spectrum of companies, each of which has its own diverse skills and expertise. A feasible internship rotation plan can be drawn up where students are rotated through internships across different companies and industries each of which is pertinent to a different sub-discipline within the student’s field of study.
After all, a prospective employee with diverse exposures to different industries and who have acquired a diverse set of knowledge and skills pertinent to each unique industry and company will have a more impressive curriculum vitae. This is something that universities and polytechnics can do for their students so that they can gain a good head start upon graduate and entry into the working world.
Such a system that you propose seems to apply to professional degrees (medicine or engineering, in this case).
What about tertiary students pursuing studies in the arts and sciences? Such an approach seems unfeasible for graduates who are generalists, rather than specialists.
I don’t see why not? After all, polytechnics and even NUS have internship schemes for general degrees, their science and arts degrees. And nowadays, even Sciences can be sub-disciplined. A biomedical science major can have a sandwich year where students intern. As in econs major in a Bachelor of Arts programme can intern in the finance degree.
I think you are referring to a liberal arts major.
But if one is in a general degree programme, then he can select multiple different industries. For example if I am doing science, I can work in a chemical firm, and then an engineering firm and a pharma firm.
What’s stopping a generalist from gaining insights from internship experiences in multiple industries?
@Kelvin,
Seriously, how relevant is one’s bachelor degree to his career nowadays? I think the choices of internships available depends on the willingness of employers to take in people.
A very good system. I was with the Military Security Department of SAF and all my superiors did was to see to it that I know as little as possible of the entire operations. I was kept in the dark for all the 15 years that I was there. Its because of the ‘need to know’ approach. In fact, it is simply to extol the brilliance of the not so clever military officers. What great intelligence and that they must be very intelligent to do intelligence and that is what kept them going and to get promotion. My job was to translate from relevant articles in Malay in the Malay press to English. Then they carried out covert ill-treatment by the telephone and other means and they are all too childish and stupid to state. However, some of them were so convincing in extolling their professionalism that they were hired by the state linked companies to do security work within their social systems.What is needed is a great overhaul in order to save money for the taxpayers. During my time and that was many years as many as 300 military officers were in this department and many of the should hone their skills in how to fight in the battleground than to play cloak and dagger games in intelligence.
Many companies will not rotate you to the various departments because they want to hold back their secrets and they also fear that once you are too knowledgeable you will run away to another company to get more money and to unload your knowledge. So, what you can do is to do your own self-rotation and it means you have to ingeniously find a way to do it. What I did as a journalist in an English newspaper in a least developed country is to do as much work as I can in so far as they are related to the print industry. I was the teacher of journalism, I sub-edited, gathered and write news, built up my contacts, rallied reporters to report on certain forms of news, hunted high and low for funds for the local journalists, got companies to place adds in the newspaper etc. If this is a kind of rotation, then it is my own self-made kind. However, my feeling is that a journalist who want to do his own self-rotation should work in a small town newspaper as he will be tasked to do almost every kind of work to get the newspaper to come out in the early hours of the morning. While what I have written is limited to the print media but I think it is applicable in every industry. It means that the ingenious person should utilise all his ingenuity to carry out his secret self-rotation and in doing so become so profesional that only God knows how much knowledge he had acquired. I have been in all kinds of work and I found out that employers are all out to hold back their secrets. They only allow a few to rotate and to become smart and to get promoted. I have yet to come across a fair and decent employer. Based on my 58 years of work experience in three continents experience, they are all mean.