Measures in place to boost health-care staffing

19 March 2013, Straits Times

Ensure enough manpower for new medical facilities

THE Ministry of Health is ramping up the supply of hospitals and health-care services over the next 10 to 20 years ("6 more hospitals, lower medical bills"; last Wednesday).

With the increase in infrastructure, is the question of the personnel running these facilities being properly addressed?

What is the Ministry of Education doing about the education and training of health-care employees?

For example, is it providing more university places for students studying medicine, dentistry and nursing? Are more scholarships and student grants being allocated for health-care services?

Thousands of Singaporean students apply for places at the National University of Singapore's medical school every year.

But due to the limited number of places, many either abandon their ambition or study overseas, at a huge financial cost to their families.

Meanwhile, we are seeing more foreign doctors, nurses and health-care workers here.

I hope the Health and Education ministries will work closely together on ensuring that we have enough manpower for the upcoming health facilities.

Lim Lick Teck

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Reply from MOH

28 March 2013, Straits Times

Measures in place to boost health-care staffing

MR LIM Lick Teck ("Ensure enough manpower for new medical facilities"; March 19) asked about the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Education's (MOE) efforts to ensure Singapore has adequate qualified manpower to staff our new health-care facilities.

We thank Mr Lim for his concern, and agree with him that well-qualified and professional health-care staff are necessary to deliver quality care.

To expand our local health-care manpower supply, the MOH and MOE have been working closely to increase the annual intakes of health-care training programmes in Singapore.

Our local medical intake will increase from around 350 to more than 400, with the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Singapore's third medical school, admitting its first cohort in August this year.

At a steady state, we expect 500 locally trained doctors to graduate from our three medical schools each year. We will also be increasing our nursing intake to 2,700 per year.

To grow our local talent pool in the public health-care sector, MOH Holdings (MOHH) awarded 176 health-care scholarships last year, an increase of more than 50 per cent from the 115 scholarships in 2011. The MOHH also offers pre-employment grants to Singaporeans studying medicine and dentistry overseas, to attract them back to the public health-care sector. Since 2010, 189 pre-employment grants have been awarded to Singaporean medical and dental students studying overseas.

Apart from students, the MOH also works closely with the Singapore Workforce Development Agency to attract mid-career professionals to join the health-care sector as nurses and allied health professionals by undertaking professional conversion programmes.

With enhancements of the training allowances during the course of study, we have seen an increase in enrolment from about 30 in 2011 to more than 50 this year.

We are also stepping up efforts to raise the awareness and attractiveness of nursing and allied health professions as careers of choice, through our newly launched branding campaign Care To Go Beyond.

Even with all the above measures, we would still need to supplement our manpower needs in the health-care sector with qualified overseas-trained staff, as health-care needs in Singapore are rapidly expanding.

The MOH and MOE will continue to invest in growing a high-quality health-care workforce, so as to fulfil the health-care mission of enabling all Singaporeans to live well, live long and with peace of mind.

Bey Mui Leng (Ms)
Director, Corporate Communications
Ministry of Health

John Lim
Director, Higher Education
Ministry of Education