Dr. James Tan Wen Tien is a senior consultant anesthetist whose background in anesthesia spurred his interest in pain medicine and he has been actively involved in pain medicine at both hospital and national level since 2004. He was awarded the Health Manpower Development Plan scholarship to pursue pain medicine in Australia in 2009 and trained at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney under the mentorship of Prof. Michael Cousins. His comprehensive training at this well-known pain center included exposure to the multidisciplinary management of chronic and cancer pain, the ADAPT pain management program based on cognitive-behavioral principles, and various advanced interventional procedures performed in the management of refractory pain.
Dr. Tan was a senior consultant anesthetist at National University Hospital (NUH) where he practiced both anesthesia and pain medicine, and Assistant Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. He was also Head of Division of Pain Management Unit, Department of Anaesthesia, NUH. He was previously a council member of the Pain Association of Singapore and was the scientific chairperson for the Association of Southeast Asian Pain Societies 2013 meeting held in Singapore which attracted more than 800 delegates from over 50 countries.
Dr. Tan received his basic medical education in the United Kingdom at the University of Leeds and University College London, where he obtained his MBBS (London) in 1998. On returning to Singapore, he trained in anesthesia obtaining his MMed (Anesthesiology) in 2004 and his specialist accreditation in 2006. He is also a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthesia.
