Dr Zheng-Wei's
Family Physician
For one community hospital doctor, care is not only about treatment — it is about understanding a patient’s story well enough to guide them through what comes next.
What drew him to healthcare was the detective work involved in complex medicine.
“I enjoy digging into difficult cases,” he says. “And in community hospital care, we often have more time to really understand what’s going on with patients.”
That instinct to look deeper led to one case he still remembers vividly. A patient was initially referred for wound care, but after reviewing nearly a year’s worth of records, he realised the patient was actually living with an aggressive neurodegenerative disease.
The diagnosis changed the course of care completely.
What followed were honest conversations with the patient and family about prognosis, priorities, and the road ahead. Eventually, the patient passed away peacefully in hospice care.
“Not often you get to walk this journey with a patient and family simply by digging medical records hard enough,” he reflects. For him, care often lies in the details others may miss. He makes time to watch patients during therapy sessions because, as he puts it, “There’s a surprising amount you can learn about a patient by seeing them walk.”
Sometimes, the smallest gestures matter most too. One patient recovering from stroke loved an old boxing movie, so the ward chaplain introduced boxing gloves and fist bumps into therapy sessions.
“I think he enjoyed that, and sometimes it’s all about the littlest gestures,” he says simply.
Years of working closely with patients have also changed how he sees people.
“Everybody has a reason for why they have become who they have become,” he says. “Many of the things that shape us are beyond our control.”
Behind the scenes, much of his work involves careful documentation and piecing together medical histories — work that patients rarely see, but which shapes safer and more thoughtful decisions.
He often spends up to 45 minutes pre-clerking new admissions so he can understand the patient’s journey beyond the immediate issue at hand.
“It helps us make decisions from a longitudinal perspective, not just what we see at the moment.”
His colleagues would probably describe him as obsessive, excitable, and stubborn — especially when it comes to understanding a case fully before moving forward.
Among the organisation’s 4R values, the one he relates to most is Responsibility.
For him, responsibility means taking the time to understand the whole picture, because good care is not just about treating illness in the present — it is about helping patients and families prepare for the future with clarity, dignity, and honesty.
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