Education Overview and Objectives

The SingHealth Duke‑NUS Paediatrics Academic Clinical Programme (Paeds ACP) Education organisational structure reflects a coordinated and integrated leadership model that supports excellence across the continuum of training. Anchored by the Academic Vice Chair for Education and supported by the Deputy Academic Vice Chair, the framework provides strategic direction while ensuring alignment across undergraduate and postgraduate domains.

Education delivery is organised into dedicated pillars, with academic and clinical leads overseeing key areas such as paediatrics, child development, and residency training. The undergraduate arm focuses on foundational medical education and early clinical exposure, while the postgraduate domain drives specialist training through structured residency programmes and advanced academic development. This dual‑track approach ensures continuity, progression, and consistency in training across all stages of professional development.

Supported by programme directors, assistant deans, and clinical educators, the structure fosters close collaboration across institutions and disciplines. This enables the integration of clinical practice, education, and research, ensuring that training remains relevant, adaptive, and aligned with evolving healthcare needs.

Together, this structured and collaborative framework strengthens the development of a future‑ready paediatric workforce—equipping clinicians with the capabilities to deliver high‑quality, holistic, and patient‑centred care.

The education domain of the Paediatrics Academic Clinical Programme (Paeds ACP) plays a central role in the journey towards achieving the three desired states for the future of child health, shaping not only what clinicians know, but how they practise, lead, and transform care. In support of a community‑empowered population health system, Paeds ACP education embeds prevention, developmental trajectories, and family‑centred thinking across all stages of training, preparing clinicians to care beyond individual encounters and strengthen child health across the lifespan. As a digital academic medical centre, the programme equips learners with digital fluency, data‑enabled decision making, and technology‑enhanced care capabilities, ensuring that innovation is integrated safely and meaningfully into everyday practice. Critically, Paeds ACP education accelerates the journey from ideas to impact by embedding research, quality improvement, and interprofessional collaboration within real clinical environments, enabling knowledge to be translated swiftly into better care and outcomes. Through this deliberate education‑led approach, Paeds ACP aligns people, practice, and purpose—ensuring that medical education not only keeps pace with system transformation, but actively drives the future of child health at a national level.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”— William Bruce Cameron (1963)

Education and learning form the bedrock of the Paediatrics Academic Clinical Programme (ACP). At its heart, the ACP recognises that excellence in clinical care is inseparable from holistic, high‑quality education, and that every healthcare professional involved in the care of children plays a vital role in both learning and teaching. Guided by this philosophy, the Paediatrics ACP is committed to nurturing an environment where education is generative—continuously renewing itself through mentorship, reflection, and purposeful knowledge transfer. Teaching and learning are thoughtfully structured to support progression across a vertical, stepwise continuum, while also promoting horizontal and inter‑professional learning that reflects the realities of modern healthcare.

KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) serves as Singapore’s central clinical training hub for paediatric medical education, supporting learners across both undergraduate and postgraduate pathways. As a major teaching hospital for the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Duke‑NUS Medical School, and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, KKH provides comprehensive paediatric training anchored in supervised clinical exposure, competency‑based assessment, and strong academic mentorship. Under the stewardship of the Paediatrics ACP, this commitment extends seamlessly into postgraduate education, encompassing residency and specialist training. Together, these programmes create a coherent educational continuum—from medical school through to advanced paediatric practice—ensuring consistency, rigour, and excellence at every stage.

The strength of this approach is reflected in measurable outcomes. The SingHealth Paediatric Medicine Residency Programme continues to attract top‑choice candidates, maintains a 100% residency completion rate, and demonstrates consistently strong performance in the Master of Medicine (Paediatric Medicine) clinical examinations. These outcomes underscore not only academic excellence, but also the programme’s ability to develop confident, competent clinicians prepared for the evolving needs of child health.

Central to sustaining this ecosystem is an ongoing commitment to faculty development. Within the Paediatrics ACP, continual investment in faculty education ensures that educators themselves are equipped with the skills, perspectives, and resilience needed to teach effectively, advance patient care, and navigate fulfilling careers in an ever‑changing healthcare landscape. Through structured faculty development initiatives, clinicians are empowered to innovate in education, lead with purpose, and serve as role models for the next generation.

Above all, the Paediatrics ACP remains guided by enduring values. Beyond the science of medicine, the programme upholds Compassion, Integrity, and Commitment as foundational principles—values that shape not only how care is delivered, but how education is conceived, shared, and lived. Through this integrated approach, KKH and the Paediatrics ACP continue to develop paediatric healthcare professionals who are prepared not only for today’s clinical challenges, but for the future of child health.

Educating with purpose, compassion, and excellence—Paediatrics ACP aspires to shape the future of paediatric care for Singapore’s children—through education that carries forward not only knowledge and skill, but the enduring humanity that defines our profession and our promise to generations yet to come.