About Residency

Postgraduate medical education in Singapore has progressively adopted the new Residency system since 2010. The Residency brings along significant enhancements to the postgraduate training system, with an increased emphasis on structured and formative training. Some of the components include:

System: Institutional structures that accord resources for training and education;
Curricula: Planned learning experiences with well-defined curricula for trainees to develop core competencies, enabling them to take on progressive graded responsibilities;
Assessment: Regular formative assessments to ensure trainees achieve core competencies at each stage of learning;
People: Designated core faculty with protected time to plan curricula, guide and supervise trainees and perform formative assessments.

Sponsoring Institutions (SI) are groups of hospitals that offer the various Residency training programmes. Presently there are three sponsoring Institutions – National Healthcare Group (NHG), National University Health System (NUHS) and SingHealth . For details on the specific Residency programmes offered by each SI, kindly follow the link provided to the individual residency websites.

Sponsoring Institution	National Health Group (NHG)	National University Health System (NUHS)	SingHealth
Participating hospitals	Institute of Mental Health Khoo Teck Puat Hospital Tan Tock Seng Hospital	Alexandra Hospital National University Hospital Jurong General Hospital	Changi General Hospital KK Women's and Children's Hospital Singapore General Hospital Sengkang General Hospital
Website

Medical Specialties Pathway

Those who are accepted into Internal Medicine (IM) Residency will be required to undergo generic training for 3 years.

At the end of their common IM training, they will enter training in Advanced Internal Medicine or one of the Internal Medicine-related specialties.

Surgical Specialties Pathways

Postgraduate Year 1 (PGY1) Officers and Medical Officers are eligible to apply for General Surgery, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Hand Surgery, Neurosurgery, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Ophthalmology, Orthopaedic Surgery, Otorhinolaryngology, Paediatric Surgery, Plastic Surgery, and Urology.

Other Specialties/Disciplines

Postgraduate Year 1 (PGY1) Officers and Medical Officers are eligible to apply for training programmes in the following specialties/disciplines:

Anaesthesiology
Diagnostic Radiology
Emergency Medicine
Family Medicine
Paediatric Medicine
Pathology
Preventive Medicine
Psychiatry

Application Process

The chart below shows the application and matching to enter residency training.

International Medical Graduates (IMGs)

Passing postgraduate exams alone without undergoing a formal structured or accredited training programme does not indicate that competency milestones in training have been reliably reached. To uphold training standards and ensure that the expected level of competency of training is attained, non-trainees will start from Residency Year One if they are accepted and matched. As such, Singaporean IMGs interested in applying for residency training are advised to return to Singapore as soon as they complete their medical studies.

If you are an IMG doctor (inflight trainee or a non-trainee) who wish to apply for residency and require further information, please refer to the Contact us page for our contact information.

Clinician Scientist Pathway

These residency tracks are under the purview of the Specialists Accreditation Board (SAB) research committee. Please visit the SAB website for requirements.

Specialties with Co-payment

A co-payment is levied on residents in highly subscribed specialties. For more information on the list of specialties and the payment amounts, please refer to the SAB website for requirements.