Leader

You may say it is important for a medical school, as well as the society, to identify potential leaders, both in research and health care administration, in their budding phase and provide appropriate nurture.

I must say I am not that confident.

My concern is simple: Do we have reliable means, based on the academic performance in secondary school and the admission interview, to identify the few who would turn into good researchers or great leaders twenty years later? No, there is no such an evidence. And, if you look around, I don't think you could identify 90% of the chair professors and senior administrators when they were applying for their medical study. Many of us need to spend some time in the field in order to know where our interest lies and what we are good at.

A notable example that I love to quote is: One of the past presidents of our College of Physicians actually failed medicine in his final MB examination. He certainly learnt his lesson and put up exceptional effort later after and became an outstanding physician. But, I must take my hat off to the department chairman who had the vision and offered a training post to this detained student.

PS. If you talk about evidence-based practice, the only thing we could be reasonably sure is students who are late in submitting the necessary documents or photos to complete the admission procedure are likely to do badly in their final MB examination.