SPEECH BY DR JANIL PUTHUCHEARY, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION & MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE SINGAPORE HEALTH QUALITY SERVICE AWARDS 2024, NUS UNIVERSITY CULTURAL CENTRE, 23 JAN 2024, 2.30 PM

Good afternoon everybody,

Thank you very much for inviting me to join you here at the Singapore Health Quality Service Awards 2024. This is in its 15th year we gather to appreciate, celebrate, and recognise the exemplary efforts of healthcare professionals in delivering quality care and positive patient experience. We have more than 1,000 award winners from 45 healthcare institutions in the public, private and community care sectors together in this hall, all of whom together we shared a commitment to providing the best possible care and experience to our patients. 

2. Healthcare is fundamentally about people taking care of one another, often forming connections when at least one of them is in a vulnerable state. The relationships that healthcare professionals forged with patients through these trusted interactions are crucial in enabling effective care and promoting recovery. The relationship is crucial, it’s not a hi-bye. In order to do the job that all of you do, you form relationships with your clients and your patients. The healthcare landscape in Singapore is evolving, and our healthcare professionals are at the forefront of the change we are experiencing. You are the ones who drive innovation, you improve patient outcomes, and you ensure that our healthcare system offers good quality healthcare to our people. 

3. There are many award recipients today that we celebrate, have been outstanding in forging meaningful relationships with patients and have shown exceptional care, compassion, and professionalism in their work. Many of them have gone beyond the scope of their work to spearhead new initiatives, to use technologies to work smarter, to improve care for their patients, and to develop new protocols to enable more accessible healthcare for all. 

Exemplifying Excellence: Stories of Individual & Team Winners

4. I am going to highlight a few of today’s winners, especially those in the Superstar category. There are 16 winners, let me just say a few words about a few of them. 

5. The first one I want to tell you about is Ms Jezsica Ida Su, Director of Nursing at Sree Narayana Mission Nursing Home. She is an inspirational leader who empowers the nurses under her charge to upskill and perform a wider range of patient care functions. She initiated the cross-training of nurses by therapists in the nursing home to perform the Passive Range of Motion (PROM) and chest physiotherapy for bed-bound residents. This move enabled nurses to provide timely assistance to their residents, and allowed the therapists to devote more time to patient care. She also developed new protocols to empower nurses. For example, in Sree Narayana, the nurses can now assess and make decisions when residents experience a fall, examining the resident for signs of trauma, calling for an ambulance and not waiting for a doctor to be part of the process. 

6. Our awards also honour the contributions of ancillary staff, who work closely and support the clinical team to provide patients with a holistic and positive healthcare experience. So the next award winner that I want to highlight is Ms Nennie Fadillah Hasnawi from Changi General Hospital (CGH). She is the Team Leader of one of CGH’s Patient Service Associate (PSA) teams at the hospital’s Emergency Department (ED). Nennie was among the first few PSAs to be deployed to the ED transition area where the patients are awaiting admission. She identified patients’ unique needs and provided insightful feedback to the ED team to improve the workflow and to enhance care for the patients. And this relieved the ED nurses of non-clinical tasks, like delivering meals and helping patients contact their families, so that the nurses can then focus on providing clinical care to their patients. Nennie believes that every staff member has valuable insights to share, and a role to play in improving patient care. I applaud them for their spirit, ownership and teamwork. Well done to Nennie and CGH.

7. This year, there are also six Best Team winners, recognising teams that work together to improve clinical practice, patient experience and who bring greater joy at work to their co-workers. Their projects speak of their unwavering commitment and exceptional efforts to go the extra mile for their patients and the community of professionals. 

8. The first team I want to tell you about, is at Sengkang General Hospital (SKH). Well done to Sengkang General Hospital. At SKH, they have a multidisciplinary team that collaborated to provide a streamlined, one-stop Diabetic Limb Salvage (DLS) service for patients with diabetes, where foot ulcers are a common complication. One-third of foot ulcers do not heal well and are a major source of morbidity and mortality. With the DLS service, patients receive holistic care without having to go through multiple consultations at different departments. SKH has since seen a significant improvement in patient outcomes since the launch of this one-stop DLS service. Among the first 50 patients on the new service, they observed an improvement in wound healing rates from 68% to 96%, along with a 30% reduction in treatment duration. So, these patients received timely clinical intervention and none of them required amputation below the knee, this resulted in an overall improved quality of life. 

9. The next team that I want to tell you about is from KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. The KK Human Milk Bank – conceptualised and set up Singapore’s and the world's first freezer locker donor milk deposit function in late 2022. This depot allows donors to deposit their breast milk donations in an efficient and hassle-free round-the-clock process at their convenience. This facilitates KK Human Milk Bank’s receipt of donated human milk and its distribution to infants whose mothers are unable to provide enough breast milk. The depot is monitored by a CCTV system and is equipped with continuous temperature monitoring and alert systems to safeguard and preserve the milk. This initiative has been very well-received by donors, who have found it user-friendly and convenient and the team hopes that it encourages more donors to step forward to provide breast milk to infants who need them.

Closing

10. Our winners and all of you have many wonderful stories of how you have impacted the healthcare system and touched the lives of the people that you have encountered in the course of your work. I can only highlight a few today in my speech, I congratulate every single one of you, every single one of the award recipients. Thank you for being such an inspiration. The resilience and dedication amongst our healthcare professionals have contributed and is the main part of the reason why we continue to have excellence in our healthcare system. But much more importantly, you and your work made a big difference in the individual lives and families that you help as you go about your work in da-to-day basis.  

11. On behalf of everyone, thank you very much for all that you do and congratulations once again to all the award recipients. Thank you.