National Medical Excellence Awards

Introduction

The National Medical Excellence Awards is an annual national-level award to recognise outstanding clinicians, clinician scientists and other healthcare professionals who made outstanding contributions in the advancement of healthcare, improvement in standards of patient safety and quality of care, which ultimately improve people’s lives. First awarded in 2008, there are currently six categories of awards:

National Outstanding Clinician Award

This award recognises individuals with at least 15 years of experience as practising clinicians in the local public or private healthcare establishments or community care organisations. They are recognised as master clinicians in their own fields of specialty and who have made exceptional clinical contributions in advancing the safety and quality of patient care, including supporting and facilitating research in the hospital, community or other healthcare-related settings. The recipients have successfully introduced effective and/or novel treatment methods and/or innovation in various fields of preventive health and community care, resulting in a higher quality and standard of healthcare delivery.

National Outstanding Clinician Scientist Award

This award recognizes individuals with at least 15 years of experience in the local public or private healthcare establishments or community care organisations both as practising clinicians and for their involvement in translational and clinical research work. They are well-recognised for seminal work in their research areas, and the research work has resulted in novel understanding of diseases with potential positive outcome on healthcare delivery in the hospital, community or other healthcare-related settings.

National Outstanding Clinician Mentor Award

This award recognizes individuals with at least 15 years of mentorship experience in the local public or private healthcare establishments or community care organisations. They are well-respected senior clinicians who are exemplary role models by perpetuating lifelong values and have contributed substantially to the guidance and training of young clinicians and clinician scientists via mentorship or by virtue of academic positions, and are still active role models.

National Outstanding Clinician Educator Award

This award recognises individuals with at least 15 years of experience as clinical educators in the local public or private healthcare establishments or community care organisations. They are well-respected clinicians who have contributed substantially to the undergraduate and/or postgraduate clinical education of clinicians and/or clinician scientists at the national level, beyond the medical school/institution.

National Clinical Excellence Team Award

This award recognises teams that have undertaken clinical quality/practice improvement projects which contributed significantly to bridging the gap between knowledge and practice. Such projects would have strong research elements in the knowledge translation process, resulting in improved standard of care, better health outcomes, higher efficiency and/or more effective patient-centred services in the hospital or other healthcare-related settings. The teams have demonstrated their achievements through successful implementation of their projects, which are novel, benefitted many patients and are above and beyond the institutions’ routine responsibility.

National Community Care Excellence Team Award

This award recognises teams that have undertaken quality/practice improvement projects/initiatives which contributed significantly to improving community health and raised awareness of preventive health in the community care setting. The teams have demonstrated their achievements through successful implementation of the projects/initiatives, which are novel, significantly contributed to preventive health and/or better community/public health in collaboration with community care organisations, public healthcare institutions, agencies and stakeholders to foster a network of support for the community.

Awards ceremony

The highlight of the NMEA is the awards ceremony, where the clinical leadership and community gather to celebrate the winners. MOH partners with a healthcare cluster each year to organise the evening gala.