Lucy catches up with Prof OBC to reflect on her journey, life lessons and the importance of opportunity and timing.
On beginnings
A stack of paper was sitting in her pigeon hole.
It was over an inch thick, filled up most of the pigeon hole in fact, and yet... seemed to have no place in it. “What is this?” she thought, flipping through the pages. But since it seemed to have no relevance to her, into the bin it went.
It was then that she received the call.
“So what do you think of the JCI standards? The manual that I put into your pigeon hole?” Prof Ong smiles as she recounts this. “I didn’t know what to say, I half wanted to say “Oops, its in the bin.” but instead I said “Oh…! That was from you!”
“So what do you think?” Geok Eng asked.
“Well of course I hadn’t read it yet…” Prof Ong trailed off. “Just choose one chapter” Geok Eng said – she was trying to form a committee for JCI accreditation. “So I thought okay, it’s a favour, for a friend… but as I read it, I thought, actually, there’s quite a bit of sense in this.”
“It took us years. Two years trying to convince people, just talk no action. Then at least another two years before we got our accreditation.” While working on JCI accreditation, it was important to have a director of patient safety, and this is where Prof OBC was the natural choice. “I was very happy being a cardiac anaesthetist, I had started a left ventricular assist programme and a complex congenital heart programme – so I was very happy where I was.” Prof Ong was also paediatric cardiac trained. In fact, she was among the pioneer group of anesthetists who supported the setting up of ASPA (Asian Society of Paediatric Anaesthesiologists).
At that time, most of the patient safety officers around the island were all anaesthetists – and she was the president of the society of Anaesthesiologists, and recounts how they used the society to discuss and launch some initiatives for patient safety, like coloured drug labels, and then the WHO Surgical Safety Check List.
So that’s how it all started. She was director of patient safety, moved to being director of clinical governance, then also head of department, and before she knew it, she was put forward to be CMB of SKH – and becoming the SingHealth group Chief Risk Officer. “Like everything there is the interest, the passion…” she says “By nature I am very curious, and between the knowledge base and the practice there’s also the mind and the heart.”
In fact she jokes that she may not have known what she was getting herself into. Though she says that may be a recurring theme with all the roles she has taken up over the course of her career. “Half of it I don’t know anything about – but I will just have to go and do a bit of reading… She recommends the medical books from the good old NUS co-op - back when she became director of clinical governance she realised that disparate departments in the hospital were put under clinical governance, suddenly she was in charge of infection control, epidemiology, workplace safety… “I have nothing against sending people for courses (because then you have a background to do things properly) – but sometimes you don’t glean as much from a course until you’re actually doing the work.
“How many people have that opportunity – to design a hospital, build a hospital, then work in that hospital – and you look back and you realise, oh maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. But then there are some ideas which you look back and realise, well that WAS a good idea.”
“But the precipitating point was the manual, the one I nearly threw away.”
Prof Ong sits in an office surrounded by beautiful memories, mementos given to her by the people that have been part of her journey. Yet she feels if she had more time, she would have liked to spend it engaging people. Prof Ong believes in engaging people to see what they want – their own aspirations.
“I always feel you should build people up, to the best of their capabilities. And everybody is different. You can’t say everybody must do the same thing, all of you must to do research, all of you must be clinician scientists, all of you must be administrators – no, people have to do what they want, only then can they contribute meaningfully.”
I mention the recent Her World article and the tough period during Covid-19. “I don’t think people mind working long hours to be honest with you” she says “it’s not the work - it’s the engagement and the appreciation”. And didn’t she find it tough during Covid having to deal with crisis? “Sometimes I say, don’t plan it to death. You have to solve problems as they come too: and that’s what happened with Covid-19. "
"The ‘perfect plan’ doesn’t exist, because by the time you’ve perfected it, the situation has changed and you need a new plan. Of course the important things you must have sorted out – the rest, you can do along the way.”
“I always feel you should build people up, to the best of their capabilities."
A Tibetian singing bowl sits at her right hand and she taps her finger on it. She has seven of them. Do you ever do meditation in the middle of the day? “Sometimes, when the day gets a bit trying” she says. “10 minutes?” I ask.
“Everybody says 10 minutes” she says “but 10 minutes is a long time (especially if you’re
not used to it), actually 2-3 minutes is enough. I call it toilet meditation – the people who work with me more or less know – she’s doing a toilet meditation. You just go in and close the door, then flush away the negative energy. Some people think it clears your mind
but actually, it does more than that - it clears your emotions.”
Prof Ong seems to breeze through life while the rest of us are struggling to navigate life with competing priorities. She comes across to all who know her as someone who is very real, very practical, and always, very calm. She may be the busiest person around, and yet she manages to make time to give a tutorial to the exit candidates, every time exit comes around. How does she make it seem like there is more than 24 hours in a day? Is she coffee driven and sleep deprived? Apparently not. She doesn’t accept an offer of coffee “Too much caffeine” she says. She brought her daily allowance of coffee to work with her – with milk, no sugar. Coffee doesn’t affect her though. She says she can drink coffee at eleven and sleep at twelve. And she admits to loving sleep. “I can forward store sleep and backwards replace sleep!” she laughs.
Prof Ong even still finds time to make soaps and embossed cards by hand. She also finds time to walk or run every day - there was recently a video of the SKH Anaesthesia Department’s response to SKH Surgery’s #PinkPlankSG challenge (everyone had to hold the plank position) where Prof Ong features happily holding the plank and even raising a hand to wave “I wouldn’t say I’m very fit” she says “but you do need to keep yourself well.”
She’s also a practical person. In a corner of her office there’s a shelf on top of a shelf housing a little screen at standing level. As I point it out she explains “Zoom meetings are very bad (for your posture) - you’re focusing on a screen and you’re usually looking down” When I suggest a standing desk she asks me if I know how expensive those are. “Over a thousand dollars” she says “it’s the mechanism you see – but this is a $50 solution which works perfectly well”. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.
When it comes to change? Healthcare quantum leaps are not easy she says change takes a bit of dare, a bit of right place right time, and a bit of taking the opportunity. Prof Ong keeps a diary of all the things she wanted to do that she thinks are good ideas “Someone told me once: “Wow, you’re a darn persistent mule, didn’t we have the same conversation two years ago?”” she says “But that was obviously the wrong place, wrong time.”
“If I come back to it and think, NOW I think is the right place and right time. Let’s try again. Then again sometimes I come back to it and I think, actually, this isn’t a good idea – strike it off. Sometimes I think still a good idea but wrong place wrong time!” she exclaims.
“I will wait for my time!”