Med-school reject is a winner

She is first Singaporean to receive prestigious award for pharmacists. -myp

Wed, Jan 28, 2009 My paper, By Koh Hui Theng

GROWING up, Dr Camilla Wong dreamt of becoming an aeronautical engineer. After all, as a teenager, she had always loved science, and physics in particular. Having a role model in her cousin helped too.

The 37-year-old said: "Every time I spoke with my cousin, who's in aeronautics, the job sounded so exciting."

But her interest soon waned. Years later, when her mother saw a newspaper report saying Singapore faced a shortage of pharmacists, her career path changed.

That was in the early 1990s. She had just been rejected by the medical school because her grades were not good enough, and she decided to turn to pharmacy.

Dr Wong said: "I wasn't too disappointed when I didn't get into medicine. As long as I was in health care, that was interesting enough."

Getting a scholarship to Western Australia's Curtin University of Technology made the switch attractive, she said.

In the end, a loss for the fields of medicine and aeronautics turned into a gain for pharmacy.

Today, Dr Wong, the head of pharmacy at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), holds an impressive resume.

The mother of a five-year-old girl was president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Singapore between 2003 and 2005.

Last November, Dr Wong made history when she became the first Singaporean to win the Ishidate Award given to pharmacists from over 10 Asia-Pacific countries who made exceptional contributions to community, hospital, industrial and scientific pharmacy, and pharmaceutical education.

Dr Wong topped the field of hospital pharmacy.

The pharmacist said of her win: "I'm still on cloud nine. Being recognised at an Asia-Pacific level really spurs me on to do greater things."

Some of her responsibilities have included setting up a detailed training plan for junior pharmacists and overseeing the centralisation of SGH?s four satellite pharmacies into one last year.

That centre, which packs medicine according to their barcodes, would be fully automated by next year, and will allow pharmacists to spend more time with their patients.

Despite such breakthroughs, Dr Wong would like to see more clinical pharmacists among the almost 1,500 registered pharmacists practising here.

A Singapore pharmacist sees an average of 80 patients daily, which is double the number an American colleague would handle.

Research, education and training would add to the wealth of experience in the profession.

"Pharmacists can start in a hospital or community pharmacy, and venture into research or go into administration. We have a breadth of options that wasn't available before," said Dr Wong.

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