Singapore's health minister commits to flexible work arrangements for nurses

In a collective agreement, healthcare institutions will commit to flexible work arrangements for nurses so that they can balance their work life, upskilling, going for training and also self care, said the former Member of Parliament.

Nurses can take a minimum of 24 months to complete their education under the Bachelor of Science Nursing Top-up programme offered by Kaplan Higher Education in partnership with UK-based Northumbria University. Among the modules covered are innovations in healthcare, health promotion and nursing older people with complex needs.

After graduation, they will have the chance to be a chief nurse, a medical care manager or nurse educator.

Ms Lim emphasised the importance of such training. She said that Singapore has always been training specialised nurses, but there is a need to focus on training them in community nursing.

She said that there was a long list of chronic diseases and that we need to upskill them to look at the aging population, as well as equip them to look after patients with chronic diseases not limited to high blood pressure and diabetes and hypertension.

She said that equipping nurses with skills on disease prevention and health promotion is timely, especially in line with the shift towards preventive health with the Healthier SG movement.

Ms Thanaletchimi spoke about the support needed to attract and retain nurses, especially on the issues of salary, attention to mental wellbeing and career progression, as they face high workloads and responsibilities.

The attrition rate for locals was 7.4 per cent in 2021, up from 5.4 per cent the previous year. In 2021, it more than doubled year-on-year for foreign nurses.

She said there was a lot of recent revisions that have been done, but she said that we need to make sure that wages are competitive to the type of job and responsibility they carry.