Dr Bang Shieh Ling Shirley

Dr Shirley Bang is a urologist practising at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital and Parkway East Hospital, Singapore.

Her subspecialty interests are in the treatment of urinary incontinence, overactive bladder syndrome, neurogenic bladder, and functional and reconstructive surgery of the urinary system.

She also has an interest in bladder rehabilitation for post-stroke, post-brain surgery and trauma patients.

The procedures she performs include male urinary incontinence procedures like male slings and artificial urinary sphincters, and female urinary incontinence procedures like tension-free vaginal tapes (TVT) and trans-obturator tapes (TOT).

Dr Shirley also performs general and oncological urological procedures including endoscopic surgery for stone diseases, minimally invasive surgery for urological cancers, and treatment of benign prostatic conditions.

She did her subspeciality fellowship in three hospitals, namely the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Birmingham Women’s Hospital, and Russells Hall Hospital in the UK. During her fellowship year, she performed complex incontinence and reconstructive surgeries for both male and female patients.

Prior to starting private practice, she was a consultant at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).

During her time in TTSH, she ran a busy tertiary practice and managed both simple and complex urological cases on a daily basis. She also ran a weekly urodynamics and video urodynamics session.

Dr Shirley was instrumental in introducing Percutaneous Tibial Nerve Stimulation (PTNS), an effective treatment for overactive bladder, particularly in patients who do not respond well to medical therapy, to TTSH in 2018. She also ran a twice monthly combined Urology-Rehab clinic at Ang Mo Kio Thye Hua Kwan Hospital for patients with neurogenic bladder after a stroke or major trauma. In addition to her daily clinical duties, she also mentors the Prostate Cancer Survival Support Group in TTSH.

She sits on the executive committee of the Singapore Society for Continence. She has also authored research papers published in respected urological journals.

She has been invited to present at local and regional conferences such as the Urological Association of Asia Congress and Singapore Urofair. She is also actively involved in organising talks and courses, including GP forums, cadaveric courses for incontinence surgery, Singapore Continence Week and Incontinence and Reconstructive surgery Masterclass as part of Singapore Urofair conference.

She is a core faculty member of the National Healthcare Group Urology Residency Program and also a clinical tutor for both NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, and NUS’ Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

As part of Dr Shirley’s drive for quality improvement and patient safety, she was part of the team that won the first prize for the project entitled ‘The Urology Time-Out Script Trial’ at the 8th National Healthcare Quality Improvement Competition in 2011. This project was subsequently presented at the international Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) conference in Geneva in 2012. She has also completed a hospital quality improvement project, leading a team to improve hospital processes.