Under the school’s curriculum, students devote one year to study an area of research interest. Although the school’s curriculum is modeled after Duke’s, there is a greater emphasis in Singapore on small-group learning, says John Sundy, MD, PhD, a rheumatologist who is associate professor of medicine, pulmonary, and critical care medicine at Duke. The small group focus is popular with students, Dr. Sundy says.
Graduates now are beginning a residency program created by SingHealth and the National Healthcare Group. This program was developed in consultation with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Graduates are training in specialties such as internal medicine, emergency medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry.
Dr. Sundy, who serves as a leader at the Duke campus for a variety of rheumatology-related clinical projects, says the partnership with Singapore is enabling both campuses to take a larger role in early clinical trials. “For rheumatology, we are just starting to build relationships for this and work on collaboration,” he says. For example, one area of future collaboration may be within osteoarthritis research, he notes.
In his two visits to the Singapore campus, Dr. Sundy says that despite cultural differences, he has been surprised by how similar the rheumatology world is in Singapore and the United States. “A lot of the clinical challenges and uncertainties are the same,” he says. “Most of the rheumatologists there are busy and have plenty of patients, like in the U.S. People work hard to maintain funding.”
Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine
About 20 to 30 students should begin at Perdana this fall. Perdana is located in Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia, about 25 minutes by car from Kuala Lumpur. The school will operate with a curriculum and model that follows that of Johns Hopkins College of Medicine. An accompanying 600-bed teaching hospital is being constructed for eventual collaboration with Perdana, and Johns Hopkins leaders are also providing feedback for the development of the hospital.
Faculty at Johns Hopkins will have the chance to teach for six months to two years at Perdana, participate in research collaborations, or assist in other curriculum development. As with the Duke and Weill Cornell campuses, classes at Perdana will be taught in English.
Dr. Gelber says he will teach in Malaysia in 2013 when the inaugural class is in its second year. As part of Johns Hopkins’ Genes to Society curriculum, which includes component units such as cardiology, immunology, and microbiology, there is a final section on musculoskeletal diseases. Dr. Gelber will teach that portion, which outlines pathophysiology, genetics, and the societal impact of musculoskeletal diseases.
