109 - 5 Longevity Lessons From Singapore That Every Independent Physician Should Know

Singapore ranks in the top 10 countries for life expectancy, with citizens living an average of 84 years. But it’s not because they have more hospital beds, more doctors, or a larger healthcare budget. In this episode of The Independent Physician’s Blueprint, Coach JPMD breaks down what’s really fueling Singapore’s longevity: government-led prevention, family-focused policies, strong social support, and smart public health investments.

If you're a young physician navigating residency, building your practice, or thinking about stepping away from the corporate model—this episode gives you a new lens to understand how longevity is shaped outside the clinic, and how you can make an impact right where you are.

🎯 Takeaways include:

• Why Singapore’s population-focused approach works (and what the U.S. is missing)
• How social design and lifestyle are as powerful as clinical care
• What physicians can start doing today to improve patient outcomes and reduce personal burnout

Listen now to reframe what real health leadership looks like—inside and outside your exam room.

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.642)
Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. Welcome to another episode of the independent physicians blueprint with your host coach JPMD. And so we're back. We're back to back on schedule with the, episode on Singapore. As I told you last week, we're going to continue this longevity series, looking at the top 10 countries in the world that live

longer and do things differently. Number 10 was reunion. Spain was number nine and Singapore is number eight. And where is Singapore? Well, if you look at the map and I kind of had to be reminded because I thought it was near China, but it is not near China. Singapore is in Southeast Asia, just south of Malaysia. It's an island off the coast of the southern part of Malaysia.

And on the other side on the western side is Indonesia. And it's a tiny country, but with a population of about 5.86 million people. And their life expectancy is 84 years. And women live 86.48 years on average with men living 81.5, which is the common thread, common theme.

amongst life expectancies in the world. Women live longer than men. And so what are some of the characteristics of Singapore? I found a website that kind of describes some of the contributing factors to the longevity. And I also realized recently that Singapore made it to the the blue zones. There and now the I believe the sixth country

in the blue zones. If you heard my episode on the blue zones, you'll know that there were five, now there are six. And some of the factors that are contributing to longevity from this website, I found Santorium.health. They talk about Singapore and their healthcare system. So their healthcare system is world-class. They have highly accessible healthcare and...

Coach JPMD (02:22.07)
So if you look at the hospitals, hospital statistics in Singapore compared to the United States, there's about 2.6 hospital beds per thousand inhabitants in Singapore versus 2.74 hospitals per thousand in the US. It looks like the United States has more physicians per thousand inhabitants. And so those are interesting statistics. We also know that there's a really

big push for healthcare promotion initiatives, or there's a healthcare promotion initiatives that are very heavily promoted by the government in Singapore. Your family oriented policies like tax breaks for young families living near aging parents is urban green spaces projects. So there's a lot of things that the government is doing to actually promote

health. And that is something that I think can be done with a smaller population. And at end of the series, I'm going to basically give you my thoughts on why these countries are living longer than the US. Obviously, we have 340 million people in the US versus Singapore's 5 million. So I think there can be some something said about how the government can control their populations or at least

promote different things in their populations a little bit better than a larger country. Especially given that the top, the last three countries, Reunion and Spain have a much lower population than the US. So that is Singapore and some of the characteristics of Singapore.

Couple other things that I found was the lifestyle factors contributing to longevity and the fact that there is good social connections. There's a lot of emphasis on family and balancing lifestyles as well. And so this is something that I think other countries can learn from. There also is a focus on prevention and slowing down diseases like dementia, diabetes and heart disease.

Coach JPMD (04:36.812)
So in terms of causes of death and mortality in Singapore, I found a resource actually from the Singaporean Singaporean hope that's right Singaporean government that states that cancers lead the top principle causes of death, followed by pneumonia and ischemic heart disease, cerebral vascular disease, strokes, and hypertensive diseases. So those are the those sounds similar to to

other countries. So Singapore is in the Southeast Asia. It borders Malaysia. And that didn't hit I don't believe the top 10 countries in the world.

In terms of life expectancy, so it's not necessary that you're living in Southeast Asia and you're living longer They must be doing something different Or I didn't go over their religious practices, but the most followed religion in Singapore is Buddhism and it's followed by people with No Religious affiliation Christianity comes in I think about third and Islam is about 15 %

at fourth. So I think the predominant religion predominant religion is Buddhism and the predominant people that occupy Singapore is are the Chinese. So that's the episode on Singapore. Next week, we're going to talk about Italy. Italy is a country that ranks in the top top 10.

So we'll hear some statistics and characteristics of Italy and how it compares to the United States. And I hope you're enjoying this series.

Coach JPMD (06:28.398)
you know, I think it's enlightening for me to understand what other countries are doing. And it helps us understand as physicians what we could potentially do and what we can emulate in our country in terms of our population of patients that we're taking care of and also in public policy. And it seems like public policy seems to be driving a lot of the longevity that we're seeing in countries that are a little bit smaller than we are. So maybe that means that we should be taking things up in our own communities to help our populations live long.

So we'll see you next week when we talk about Italy.