A sharing by Tan Tze Lee and Cheong Pak Yean
Mummy daddy don’t go to work!
These words were uttered over 20 years ago now, but the memories still rankle the emotions.
Choices
Doctors are fortunate and unfortunate. We are fortunate in that our profession allows us the security to choose. We are unfortunate in that our profession is sometimes a most demanding mistress.
When we step out of our home into the cut and thrust of clinical practice, we leave behind our families. Others care for our children when we are away from them. If we are fortunate, grandparents play surrogate. Oftentimes, it may be a stranger performing a job.
The glory and honour of becoming a doctor rapidly pale beside the pleading cries of our children. Each of us has to make a choice in order to find the balance that works for our situation. Some of us choose the fast lane and some choose the more meandering path. Does one ever have to not choose?
I made my decision years ago. I wanted to serve my community as a doctor. I also wanted to put my family first. I chose general practice, or family medicine in today’s parlance. It offered me the opportunity to determine the scope of what I wanted to do, work the hours I wanted to work, and the flexibility to fulfill my responsibilities as a parent.
Nevertheless, the drawing depicts the tension that the general practitioner continues to face in caring for his patients, and for his family.
—— Adj Assoc Prof Tan Tze Lee
The Broken Window
Building up a new practice some forty years ago was challenging. I had to work very long hours and do house calls. Many patients knew my wife and I lived in the flat above the clinic. They would come knocking to seek urgent help after clinic hours.
There was one abusive patient. He had a school-going daughter with asthma. I would often get pager messages from him, and at times, my wife and I had to cut short our night grocery shopping for me to return to the clinic to see his daughter. I do not know why he had to page after clinic hours instead of coming earlier. Often, his daughter just had minor respiratory infections.
One night he paged yet again, but I was engaged in a house call then. When I returned home, my wife told me that one of our window panes was broken. She had heard yelling and banging on our door that night, but had not responded. The teller had left after throwing a big stone at one of our window panes.
The man returned the next night when the clinic was full of patients. He launched into a tirade about how unethical this doctor was. My wife, who worked the reception after her day job, coolly responded, So it was you who wanted to come into my house when my husband was not in. We want you to pay for the broken window. The man froze and beat a hurried retreat amidst laughter from the other patients.
I sealed the cracks with duct tape. We never did get any compensation but we also never feared being harassed again. In time, we saved up enough for the deposit on another apartment and moved away from living just above the clinic.
Dr Tan Tze Lee is the president of the College of Family Physicians, Singapore. He is a principal in his private practice where he has taught successive cohorts of medical students. He is also an adjunct professor in Family Medicine in NUS.
A/Prof Cheong Pak Yean is a family and internal medicine physician who is also a psychotherapist in private practice. He teaches undergraduates and has an interest in medical humanism and communication, and is a past president of the College and the Singapore Medical Association.
The commentary and vignette were reproduced with permission from the book “Being Human, Stories from Family Medicine” edited by Cheong Pak Yean and Ong Chooi Peng and published in 2021 by the College of Family Physicians Singapore.
Pictures of illness experiences were drawn by NUS medical students in workshops conducted from 2012-2017 by A/Prof Cheong Pak Yean. Senior family physicians subsequently shared vignettes and commentaries based on the pictures.
