Dr Tan Chuan Chien

Dr Tan Chuan Chien is a general surgeon at Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore.

His subspecialty is in breast and endocrine, and in particular, thyroid surgery.

He was a senior consultant in the department of general surgery at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH) and in the division of general surgery (breast surgery) at the National University Hospital. He served as head of the division of breast and endocrine surgery at NTFGH.

Dr Tan graduated from the University of Adelaide Medical School, Australia and underwent his surgical training in Melbourne where he completed advanced training in general surgery at Monash Health in Melbourne. He was admitted as a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and a specialist register in general surgery in Australia. He then went on to pursue his subspecialty interest in breast and endocrine surgery with 3 additional years of accredited training through the BreastSurgANZ matching fellowship programme.

In 2012, Dr Tan was appointed the University of Melbourne’s department of surgery fellowship in breast and endocrine surgery to St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne. He also completed 1-year as a fellow in breast and endocrine surgery at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane. He then spent another year pursuing his interest in oncoplastic breast surgery as a fellow in Nepean Hospital, Sydney. Dr Tan also worked and trained as an endocrine surgeon, in particular thyroid surgery, during his time in these units.

In Singapore, he was responsible for setting up a comprehensive breast service and was the clinical lead for the breast cancer value-driven outcome programme at NTFGH. He was also a member of the Ministry of Health breast cancer clinician workgroup for value-driven care and was also involved in clinical audit and quality assurance committees to ensure standard of care within the hospital.

Besides his clinical work, Dr Tan was active in both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. He was an adjunct assistant professor at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He was also the undergraduate lead responsible for all medical students rotated in the department of general surgery at NTFGH, and the associate programme director for the National University Health System (NUHS) surgery-in-general residency programme. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Tan received the NUHS HEROES in Education Award 2020 for continuing education.

He has published in several peer-reviewed journals on the topic of breast cancer. While at NTFGH, he obtained collaborative research grants on cancer research and quality improvement initiatives, and managed a team of research coordinators to improve breast cancer research in Singapore.