Duty of Care

Can a patient-centric experience change the way we approach breast cancer? One intrepid doctor and her team think so

- Hashirin Nurin Hashimi

“Going for a mammogram is not one of the most comfortable experiences that a woman goes through,” says breast surgeon Dr Tan Yah Yuen. “But a nice and conducive environment [might] help.”

This is just one of the many factors that Dr Tan, a senior consultant at Solis Breast Care and Surgery Centre, felt could be done better in patient care. “We want to take away that environment of going to a huge radiology centre with all these other patients doing all sorts of scans,” says Dr Tan, who was previously in private practice at Mount Elizabeth Orchard.

She shares how at the medical centre, when a patient required a mammogram, for example, she would send them to the radiology department, [where they would go] alongside patients from other clinics. “Over the years, patients who come to see me would often ask, ‘Can I do it [a mammogram] here at your clinic?’ We don’t but when patients keep asking, you start thinking maybe we can do something about it.”