Health Minister Ong Ye Kung reports a significant drop in emergency department wait times alongside workforce expansion efforts.
SINGAPORE: By the end of 2023, nearly 4,000 new nurses will be gradually integrated into Singapore’s healthcare system as part of the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) strategy to replenish personnel lost to other countries and to expand the nursing workforce, announced Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung on Monday (Nov 21).
Mr. Ong highlighted that this addition represents approximately 10% of the current nursing workforce, and is 700 more than the number of nurses brought on board last year. He made these remarks at the Tan Chin Tuan Nursing Award ceremony for enrolled nurses, held at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine.
Earlier this year, Parliament noted an increase in the attrition rate among local and foreign nurses in the public sector compared to 2020. Local nurse attrition rose to 7.4% in 2021 from 5.4% the previous year, while foreign nurse attrition more than doubled to 14.8% in the same timeframe, as reported by Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health Rahayu Mahzam.
In a bid to attract and retain nursing talent, the MOH announced in July that over 25,000 nurses would receive special payments ranging from 1.7 to 2.1 months of their base salary.
Mr. Ong stated that authorities are consistently working to alleviate nurses’ workloads while addressing the manpower shortage. “During the pandemic, competition for nurses among various countries intensified, and we lost many of our experienced foreign nurses,” he explained. He emphasized the need to replace those lost while expanding the nursing workforce through local and foreign recruitment.
Of the nearly 4,000 new nurses anticipated for onboarding next year, there will be a higher ratio of foreign to local nurses, approximately 60:40, to counteract the slowdown in foreign nurse recruitment caused by COVID-19 border restrictions over the past two years. Mr. Ong reassured that the majority of Singapore’s nursing workforce will still consist of locals from nursing school intakes and mid-career training programmes.
Bed Waiting Times Almost Halved
In addition to the workforce update, Mr. Ong addressed the “crowded situation” in hospitals, particularly in emergency departments, describing it as a “significant burden” on healthcare workers over the past year.
With the decline of COVID-19 cases from the Omicron subvariant XBB, bed occupancy rates, emergency department visits, and wait times have all improved. Mr. Ong noted that the number of non-urgent emergency patients waiting for beds is now half of what it was at the peak of the XBB wave.
“The median wait times at emergency departments have decreased from approximately seven hours to around four hours,” he stated, adding that patients needing urgent care have always been admitted without delay.
The MOH is actively working to further reduce bed occupancies by expanding Transitional Care Facilities (TCF) and lifting the practice of reserving beds specifically for COVID-19 patients. TCFs are designed to admit medically stable patients from public hospitals while they await transfers to intermediate and long-term care facilities or final discharge plans.
Regarding the removal of dedicated COVID-19 wards, Mr. Ong said, “The concept of treating COVID-19 as an endemic disease should rightly extend to hospitals, as it is applied in the community.” He added that current precautionary measures for infectious diseases negate the need for separate hospital wards exclusively for COVID-19 patients.
“This transition will be implemented progressively, and all our hospitals are actively working on it,” he concluded, expressing hope that its impact will soon be felt in alleviating crowding in hospitals and emergency departments.
