Demographics of Nursing Professionals in Singapore

16 January 2012

Question No. 42

Name of person: Assoc Prof Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim

Question

To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide a breakdown of the current number of nursing professionals who are Singaporeans, permanent residents and foreigners.

Question No. 65

Name of person: Dr Lam Pin Min

Question

To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide an update on the sources and current proportion of foreign doctors and nurses working in the restructured hospitals, specialist centres and polyclinics in Singapore.

Answer

1. As at end 2010, there were around 29,300 nurses in Singapore. 80% were Singaporeans and permanent residents, and the remaining 20% were foreigners.

2. In the public sector, 22% of our nurses are foreigners from countries such as the Philippines, India and China. Close to 10% of our doctors come from Malaysia and some 14% come from India and other countries.

3. We have increased the medical intake by 26% from 250 in 2006 to 316 in 2010, through the expansion of NUS’s medical intake and the starting of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in 2007. Singapore’s third medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, will also start training its first batch of 50 students in 2013 and gradually increase its annual intake to 150 students eventually. At steady state, the three medical schools will train a total of 500 doctors annually.

4. Likewise, we have increased the nursing intake by 16% from about 1,600 in 2006 to about 1,850 students in 2010, through expanding intakes at ITE and the polytechnics as well as the Bachelor of Science (Nursing) course at NUS from 2006. We will further increase the nursing intake to 2,000.

5. The public healthcare clusters have also stepped up efforts to attract Singaporeans studying healthcare-related disciplines overseas to return back to Singapore. In particular, the public healthcare clusters introduced the Pre- Employment Grant last year, which provides financial support for overseas Singaporean medical students during their final two years of study. A total of 68 awards were given out to Singaporean medical students studying in the United Kingdom and Australia.

6. While the Ministry of Health’s priority is to grow the number of local healthcare professionals, we will need foreign doctors and nurses to supplement our local manpower supply to help meet the healthcare needs of Singaporeans.