Speech by Mr Amrin Amin, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Health, at the Nurses' Day Celebrations at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, 1 Aug 2018

Professor Chua Hong Choon, Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer (Clinical), National Healthcare Group

Professor Eugene Fidelis Soh, Chief Executive Officer, Tan Tock Seng Hospital

Mr Yong Keng Kwang, Chief Nurse, Tan Tock Seng Hospital

Ladies and gentlemen,

1. Good afternoon, and a very Happy Nurses’ Day to all of you! I am delighted to join you as you celebrate this very special occasion.

2. This year’s Nurses’ Day theme is “Fearless Commitment, Endless Compassion”, which truly encapsulates your dedication and passion in caring for your patients. You are the unsung heroes and heroines of our healthcare system, and I salute you for your commitment and care.

3. Nurses make up the heart of the healthcare industry. As healthcare in Singapore expands, nurses have been growing alongside it, with evolving roles and responsibilities that take the nursing profession to greater heights.

4. 
   

   Nurses as specialists

5. Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH)’s nurses are uniquely positioned as specialists in the various disciplines that the hospital is renowned for, as well as experts in fields that were not traditionally nursing-related. By now everyone would have seen the near complete National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) across the road. TTSH has a long legacy of being pioneers in infectious disease control and care, and NCID nurses and staff will be our pioneers of the next generation of infectious disease management.

6. Specialist Outpatient Clinic J, which handles outpatient Infectious Diseases (ID) cases, has the only nurse-led triage in TTSH outside of the Emergency Department. Nurses running SOC J are highly trained and experienced in fields such as infectious diseases, dermatology, and tuberculosis, and their inpatient counterparts will see greater opportunities to specialise and upgrade as TTSH gears up to provide better coordinated care for its patients in NCID.

7.  Another niche that TTSH nursing is well-known for is geriatrics. Older adults often require holistic care as they have complex and unique medical, functional, and psycho-social needs. TTSH’s 300 Geriatric Resource Nurses (GRNs), are trained specially in managing conditions that arise from these needs.

8. Over the past year, GRNs have embarked on delirium prevention by training a team of volunteers to help with engaging elderly patients in the wards. In the delirium prevention programme, a unique tool the GRNs created from scratch is a simple puzzle that makes use of multiple locks and keys – basic to you and I, but it keeps elderly patients engaged, while helping them work a little on their fine motor skills. In addition to their existing roles, these GRNs are also ‘on call’ to help manage cognitively impaired elderly patients with challenging behavioural issues in other wards, using their expertise and training in geriatric care to reduce and prevent medication-based interventions.

9. I am also told that being a nurse in TTSH often means being so much more than a nurse. The nurse scientists among you are driving the discovery of new knowledge, with the aim of applying it to patient care through evidence-based practice. Research grants are available to those who are interested in conducting smaller research projects within your own field of work, which adds to the repertoire of information and creates new frontiers in better person-centred care. For those whose interests lie in other aspects of improving nursing work, earlier this year TTSH pioneered a dual qualification initiative for promising nurses. On top of nursing studies, candidates also take up a course in Health IT or HR Management.

10. 
    

    Evolving roles of nurses

11. Being a nurse has never been as exciting as it is now. The nursing domain extends beyond healthcare institutions into the community, and the focus on person-centred, holistic care means that nurses’ roles are evolving and expanding to meet changing healthcare needs.

12.  Earlier this year, we announced a new collaborative prescribing programme, where Advanced Practice Nurses and senior pharmacists will be upskilled to prescribe medicines and order tests for patients within a collaborative practice framework. The pioneering cohort of collaborative prescribing practitioners have just graduated from the National Collaborative Prescribing Programme in July. This expanded role will see these qualified nurses being empowered and enabled to bring better care to patients and improve their accessibility to healthcare in the community.

13. To develop future nurse leaders, MOH also recently launched the Singapore Nurse Leaders Programme, a new national programme to groom mid-level nurse leaders with strong leadership and policy perspectives to be advocates of change. The Community Care Scholarship introduced last year will also strengthen leadership capabilities, by developing nursing leaders to shape the future of community care.

14. In tandem with transforming the roles of nurses, we are also doing more to grow the nursing workforce by providing multiple pathways for Singaporeans to join the sector. We are encouraging more mid-career individuals to switch to nursing through Professional Conversion Programmes. The latest of these to be introduced is a new two-year degree programme in Nursing, offered by the National University of Singapore’s Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies. I am also happy to note that more students are taking up nursing, with the overall intake across ITE, polytechnics and universities rising over the last five years from about 1,500 in 2012 to about 2,000 in 2017. This is a jump of more than 30 per cent. Admissions for the 2018 intake are ongoing, and we expect it to surpass 2,100, which will be the highest in the last six years.

15. 
    

    Closing

16. As Singapore’s population ages, the nursing profession will need to continue to be nimble to enable changes in the way we deliver effective and quality care. Even as we continue to invest in the profession and develop our healthcare workforce to meet future challenges, we hope you will also continue to grow your skills, and most importantly, to stay true to your calling.

17. Last week, six nurses were honoured with the President’s Award for Nurses, Singapore’s highest accolade in the nursing profession, in recognition of their exemplary contributions to the profession and community. One of these nurses is TTSH’s Advanced Practice Nurse and Senior Nurse Clinician Ms Ang Ching Ching, who has played a pivotal role in setting up a dedicate palliative care ward and building up TTSH’s palliative nursing care services.

18. Today, we salute your steadfast commitment to your chosen calling, and we recognise your selfless compassion and empathy for your patients. Once again, a very Happy Nurses’ Day to all of you!