Foreign nurses in public sector

8 April 2013

Question No. 483

Name of Person: Ms Sylvia Lim

Question

To ask the Minister for Health (a) what is the current proportion and number of nurses in each of the acute care public hospitals who are of non-Singaporean nationality (other than Malaysians); (b) whether such foreign nurses are trained to have some proficiency in either Chinese dialects, Malay or Tamil prior to deployment; and (c) what is the attrition rate of Singaporean nurses from these public hospitals in the last 10 years.

Answer

As at 31 Dec 2012, foreign nurses excluding Malaysians made up 26% (or around 4,950) of our public healthcare clusters’ nursing workforce.  While we have expanded local nursing intakes over time, we will continue to need foreign nurses to supplement the local workforce to meet the healthcare needs of Singaporeans. 

2        In addition to meeting registration requirements set by the Singapore Nursing Board, foreign nurses have to meet minimum standards in English proficiency before they are allowed to practise locally.  Local assimilation programmes which include basic conversational language courses (e.g. Mandarin, Chinese dialects and Malay) are conducted to familiarise foreign staff with our local clinical practice, language and cultural context, to help them adapt more quickly to the local working environment and enable better patient-staff communication.  Their language and communication skills are monitored closely during their induction period in our local system.  Mentorship and supervision are also provided.   In instances where the patient and the nurse do not speak the same language, other staff are called upon to help interpret.  It is through such training, supervision and teamwork that our public healthcare workforce work together, regardless of nationality, to give our patients a good quality of care.

3        The attrition rate of local nurses in our public healthcare clusters fell from about 13% in 2003 to about 8% in 2012.  MOH will continue working with our public healthcare clusters to strengthen the retention of nurses.