JILID 5 BIL 2 MAY 2003

JILID 5 BIL 2 MAY 2003
Newsletter of the Malaysian Society of Anaesthesiologists and the College of Anaesthesiologists,
Academy of Medicine of Malaysia

Table of Contents

• Message from Dato Dr K Inbasegaran, Immediate Past President, MSA
• Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthesiologists
  Royal Australian College of Physicians
  Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine
  Honorary Fellowship for Prof Gracie Ong Siok Yan
• Message from Prof Chan Yoo Kuen, President, MSA
• Malaysian Society of Anaesthesiologists Executive Committee Members 2003/2004
  Critical Care Medicine Section, Malaysian Society of Anaesthesiologists Committee 2003/2004
  College of Anaesthesiologists, Academy of Medicine of Malaysia Council 2003/2004

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Message from Dato Dr K Inbasegaran, Immediate Past President, MSA

CHANGING OF THE GUARD - A FAREWELL NOTE

It is with a great sense of relief as well as personal satisfaction to pen the last note as President of MSA to my fellow colleagues in the Society. In the last 10 years, it has been a privilege and honour in serving the MSA in various capacities. I have had the unique honour of serving 5 years as President comprising of 2 terms in elected office as well as one year standing in for Dr Namazie when he took leave of absence. In addition to that, there were 4 years as President elect and another 2 years as Immediate Past President making it a decade of being holding office in the Society. To boot, I was also President of the College of Anaesthesiologists for one term and Council Member since its inception. It is also an interesting coincidence that I am due for retirement as Head of Department of Anaesthesia in Hospital Kuala Lumpur in a months time ollowing my completion of office as President. One could say that I was literally married to the Society and College for the past 10 years!

My years of office were interesting and very challenging times for the Society as well as a period where we had to redefine our role. In a decade, we had increased our membership almost three fold and increased our financial strength six fold. When I reflect on those last 10 years, there were so many defining moments for me personally. In early 1993, we started off with setting our Safety Standards in the operating rooms which today is accepted as a landmark document of our commitment to patient safety. The next was the formation of the College (earlier known as Chapter), of Anaesthesiologists and defining its role in relation to the Society. There were moments of uncertainty when it was thought there would be fragmentation of our fraternity and some pushed for merger. We persevered and successfully nurtured a College and later allowed it to define its role as the academic arm of Anaesthesiolog y. My two - year stint as College President when I was an Immediate Past President of the Society, helped to some extent. We formed, rather quickly, Specialty Interest Groups (SIGs ) modeled along the lines of SIGs of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthesiologists to cater for the growing subspecialty development and interests in anesthesiology. Many members will not be aware of the significance of this development. Being small in numbers, it is crucial to keep our fraternity together and at the same time, cater for the needs of members who have differing professional interests. Having separate societies to cater for subspecialties as often seen in some developed countries, has often ended in unmitigated disaster even though they had the numbers. The College will always be able to support activities of these special interest groups and in the past 6 years we had seen a rapid increase of College CME activities as reflected in the activities of the special interest groups. The bottom line was that Society and College were able to settle in nicely and complement each others role in the professional development of anaesthesiologists as well as represent anaesthesiology in a medico political sense. The Society itself committed to a wide range of rural and peripheral hospital continuing education programme as well as running major international meetings of which we had four in the last 10 years. It was rather unfortunate that the proposed combined ANZCA and College/MSA meeting scheduled for 2005 could not materialise due to travel concerns by our Australian colleagues. Sometime in the early 90s, we decided to support our members who presented papers in selected overseas meetings by way of registration fees as well as subsidised travel. Although this was a very costly exercise, we were quite prepared to do this to encourage our members to present papers at international meetings and up to date, we are the only professional body to do so.

Another development was the initiation of the ASEAN Journal of Anaesthesiology in 1998 and the Society was given the honour to start the journal for the benefit of our ASEAN members. We have now, a journal which is literally home grown and where our doctors can publish papers. We hope to get the journal indexed soon. The Societys and my personal gratitude go to Prof Ramani Vijayan who has, very graciously, undertaken this mammoth task of getting a journal going. In addition, we have also started a regular newsletter as well as a web page of Society and College to keep our members abreast of our activities.

All these tremendous developments for the Society could never have taken place without the wholehearted support and enthusiasm of our Exco members who have tirelessly worked for the Society and it has been a privilege working with them. As highly trained professionals and independent thinkers, we have always had over fair share of debates over lots of issues but at the end of the day, we have always reached consensus on what is to be done in a truly democratic fashion. My very special thanks go to our Excecutive Secretary, the indefatigable Miss Y M Kong who, so efficiently, managed our secretariat. There are two other individuals with whom I have been associated in the society for the whole of the 10 years, namely, our Treasurer, Dr Kathiresan and our outgoing Chairman, Dr Sylvian Das and are now pillars of MSA in their own right. I have always sought their advice and their help in so many matters. My personal thanks to Dato Dr Lim Say Wan who made so many outstanding contributions to our Society in the early years as well as to Anaesthesiology internationally as President of the World Federation of Anaesthesiologists. As a relatively small Society, we are indeed immensely proud to have had one of our Past Presidents as President of WFSA. We must always acknowledge the contributions of all our Past Presidents who led the Society especially in those early years when resources were very limited.

My thanks also go to the medical industry who have always, so generously, contributed to our activities and supported whole-heartedly, any event the Society hosted. I have been very fortunate to enjoy a cordial relationship with the industry that has always responded positively to my appeals to fund society activities.

The guardianship of the Society now passes to Prof Y K Chan from University Malaya. A distinguished academic, she is eminently qualified to lead our Society to a new era and my congratulations to her as well as best wishes to her and her team in their future endeavors. The next few years are going to be very exciting as well as challenging for the Society and College

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Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthesiologists
Royal Australian College of Physicians
Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine
Honorary Fellowship for Prof Gracie Ong Siok Yan

The Executive Committee of the Malaysian Society of Anaesthesiologists would like to congratulate
Prof Gracie Ong Siok Yan for being conferred the Honorary Fellowship on 3 May 2003.
The citation was read by Dr Richard Lee (as below).

The Board may confer Honorary Fellowship of the Faculty on distinguished persons who have made a notable contribution to the advancement of the science and practice of intensive care who are not practising intensive care in Australia or New Zealand

Mr Dean, I have the honour of presenting to you Gracie Siok Yan Ong.

Gracie commenced specialist training in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care with the Faculty of Anaesthetists, RACS in 1972. Her training was undertaken at the University Hospital, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and she sat the Fellowship Examination in Singapore. To gain extra experience, she worked at Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney from 1975 to 1978 under the guidance of Drs Graham Fisk and George Davidson, where she gained an insight into the intricacies of paediatric and adult intensive care, working first as a resident medical officer, then anaesthetic registrar and then temporary staff specialist. George Davidson described her contributions to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit as most outstanding.

Gracie returned home to Kuala Lumpur in 1979 and commenced work as Lecturer in the Department of Anaesthesiology, University of Malaya, helping to run the busy ICU at the University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC). She was appointed Associate Professor in 1981 and Professor and Senior Consultant in 1992. In 1999, she was appointed Head of the Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care.

During the 23 years, Gracie has been at the University of Malaya she has been deeply involved in patient care, teaching, training and research. Her efforts have been integral to the development of intensive care services and specialist anaesthetic services (especially open and closed heart surgery), for the University of Malaya Medical Centre. She has put into action, a philosophy of life long learning and teaching having spent attachments as clinical assistant in the Liver Unit of Kings College Hospital, London, Visiting Fellow to the Cardiothoracic Unit of St Vincents Hospital, Sydney and spending time at Greater Ormond Street, Hammersmith, University of Liverpool and Memorial Hospital North Carolina.

She has over 40 peer reviewed publications, eight book chapters and more than 50 major presentations mostly on Intensive Care Medicine related topics. At the same time, she has found time to raise three children, be an internal and external examiner for the Master of Anaesthesiology courses in Malaysia, Supervisor of Training for specialist trainees, lecturer and tutor for undergraduates and author and coordinator of the Critical Care Nursing Course.

Gracie seems to have been a member of every relevant medical committee in Malaysia (from Critical Care to Pain to Anaesthesia), and on the University of Malaya Senate. As a member of the National Resuscitation Committee, she has helped to spread the word on CPR. Through her work in helping to set up the clinical skills laboratory and the simulation centre at the UMMC, she has improved the critical skills training of doctors, nurses and paramedics.

Her research projects have encompassed spinal immobilisation and its effect on neurologic injury, severity of illness scoring, endotoxin assay, immunodiagnosis of candidiasis, assessment of nutrition, catheter related sepsis, endothelial dysfunction and antimicrobial resistance in ICU.

In short, Professor Gracie Ong has made a notable contribution to the advancement of the science, teaching, training and practice of Intensive Care Medicine. Her contributions to Intensive Care Medicine, particularly in Malaysia, have been invaluable.

Mr Dean, I have the honour to present to you Gracie Siok Yan Ong for conferment of Honorary Fellowship of the Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine.

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Message from Prof Chan Yoo Kuen, President, MSA

I would like to officially thank members of the Society who voted me in as the Incoming President of the MSA two years ago. It is with great humility today that I accept this honorable position as the new President of the Society.

I would also like to thank the Past President, Dato Inba for his confidence in me. He was instrumental in getting me voted in for this position. On behalf of the Society, I would like to thank him for all his contributions to the Society. He has served in this capacity for many more years than most previous Presidents and it is clear to all that he has brought the Society to new heights in spite of his busy schedule. Dato Inba - Thanks for your contributions to the Society.

I would also like to welcome the new members of the EXCO who have, very graciously, allowed themselves to be elected into office today.

We are all going through very uncertain and very troubled times as a Society. For the first time in many years, we had to postpone the scientific component of the AGM - a component that you as members of the Society look forward to every year. Our speakers from overseas, a few from Singapore and from other places have been affected in more ways than one by the SARS epidemic. We nearly had to postpone this AGM as well but with Dato Inbas rightful insistence, we decided to hold it today and get on with our society life.

In the days to come, members of the Society (if not the profession), are going to be called (a fair number may already have been involved), to manage patients affected by the epidemic. I would like to urge the Society to unite in helping all members who are going to be in the frontline in as many ways as they can. These can be in the form of emotional support, in the form of shared knowledge, shared experience and other novel ways that you, as members of the Society can think of, to make the life of each and every member of the Society less stressful in these troubled times.

As president and as part of the EXCO in the Society, we will try to reach out to each and every one of you over not only the issue of the epidemic but all other issues that you deem important. I would like to reach out especially to the younger members of the Society and to get them involved in the activities of the Society. It is my aim to make the Society not only more visible to them but through their active involvement, more visible to the public at large as well. At the end of the day, we are going to make you realise that there is mutual benefit to be gained by joining actively in the activities of the Society. The life of the Society depends on each and every one of you and in this really troubled times, it pays to reach out and be reachable as well. I thank you for coming to attend this very special AGM.

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Malaysian Society of Anaesthesiologists Executive Committee Members 2003/2004
Critical Care Medicine Section, Malaysian Society of Anaesthesiologists Committee 2003/2004
College of Anaesthesiologists, Academy of Medicine of Malaysia Council 2003/2004

MALAYSIAN SOCIETY OF ANAESTHESIOLOGISTS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBERS 2003/2004

CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE SECTION,
MALAYSIAN SOCIETY OF ANAESTHESIOLOGISTS COMMITTEE 2003/2004

COLLEGE OF ANAESTHESIOLOGI STS,
ACADEMY OF MEDICINE OF MALAYSIA COUNCIL 2003/2004

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