Speech by Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Health, at the Singapore Nurses Association - International Council of Nurses (ICN) Gala Dinner, 29 June 2019, 7.40pm at Gardens By The Bay, Flower Field Hall

Ms Annette Kennedy, President, International Council of Nurses 

Associate Professor Lim Swee Hia, President, Singapore Nurses Association

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

1   Good evening. It is my great pleasure to join you this evening, with outstanding nurse leaders from all over the world. To all the delegates from abroad, I want to extend a very warm welcome to all of you to Singapore. I would also like to thank the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and Singapore Nurses Association (SNA) for your hard work in organising the ICN Congress this year.

Nurses’ role in today’s healthcare landscape

2   Florence Nightingale once said “Nursing is an art”. Indeed, nursing is no easy feat. It requires hard work, devotion and care. All of you deserve a round of applause.

3   As all of us know, Singapore’s ageing population will put a triple whammy on our healthcare system. First, demand for healthcare and aged care services will increase.  Second, the local labour force will shrink with older workers retiring and fewer younger workers entering the workforce. Third, family size is shrinking, which weakens social support for an ageing population, thus further increasing the demand for healthcare services and institutional care. We are not alone in this as many countries around the world are facing the same challenges.

4   This triple whammy puts us in a position where on the one hand, we will need more nurses who play an integral role in strengthening health and social care for the population, while on the other hand, recruitment of nurses will become increasingly difficult, even as we continue to work to expand the nursing workforce. Beyond growing the nursing workforce, we need to support and enable our nurses through building a positive working environment– one that promotes professional growth and empowers them to do more.

5   We often tell our patients the three “less” – less sugar, less salt, less oil. Today, I would like to talk about  three “more” – more opportunities for our nurses to learn, more investment in developing their leadership, and more support for them to innovate. 

Developing skills and competencies to meet population needs

6   First, Singapore is investing in continuing learning to develop future-ready nurses with the requisite skills and competencies to meet evolving healthcare needs.

7   Earlier this year, we announced the launch of the National Nursing Academy (NNA) to coordinate and support lifelong learning for nurses across healthcare institutions, schools and training providers. The NNA will oversee continuing education and training efforts which include establishing competency frameworks and training roadmaps to articulate the skills and competencies required for nurses’ evolving roles, and an accreditation system for workplace-based learning, so that such learning can be recognised nationally.

8   Through the NNA, nurses can develop new skills and competencies, and achieve their career goals. 

Developing nurse leaders

9   Good leaders are needed to ensure that our healthcare system is able to meet today’s ever changing and demanding healthcare environment. It is thus important that we not only develop nursing leaders, but also leadership in every nurse. The Healthcare Leadership College (HLC) in Singapore offers programmes to develop nurses as change agents with strong leadership capabilities and deep policy insights.

10  One of the latest programmes the college has rolled out is the Singapore Nurses Leadership Programme (SNLP), the first cohort of which graduated in May this year. The SNLP aims to equip participants with an understanding of the care models, roles and scope of nursing practice within each community care setting and patient transitions between each setting. The knowledge and networks built by nurses who go through the SNLP and other leadership programmes will become increasingly important in developing future-ready nurses. 

Empowering nurses to provide autonomous and holistic care

11   Besides having more opportunities to learn, nurses need to be empowered to drive healthcare transformation. We believe that nurses are key enablers of our evolving healthcare system..

12   For example, nurses can now provide more autonomous care for their patients through the national Collaborative Prescribing Programme which was developed last year. The Collaborative Prescribing Programme upskills Advanced Practice Nurses and senior pharmacists so that they can prescribe medicine for patients within a collaborative practice framework. I am pleased to share that many APNs have been trained since the commencement of the Collaborative Prescribing Programme last year.

13   We have also piloted a community nursing model to support the shift beyond hospital to the community. Teams of nurses follow up with their patients in their homes, after they are discharged from hospital, and this helps to prevent unnecessary re-admissions. The nurses also work with community partners to reach out to residents and provide health assessments, advocate preventive health and support management of chronic health conditions. Nurses play a significant role in helping patients take ownership of their health.

Innovative efforts to improve the healthcare system

14   With the growing complexity of the healthcare needs, nurses also play an increasing role in championing efforts to innovate and transform our healthcare system to improve outcomes.

15   I would like to take this opportunity to share with you an interesting innovation by a group of nurses from the Changi General Hospital. This group of 13 nurses, together with six other CGH staff, observed that ward nurses encountered challenges communicating with dialect-speaking patients. The patients do not speak Mandarin or English, they speak dialects.To help bridge the communication gap between the patients and staff, the team worked with the CGH Office of Innovation and designed a smartphone application called i-COMM. i-COMM offers multimedia features such as audio output and pictorial aids, as well as a visual phonics guide. The app has been used in pilot programmes and patients have responded positively to the app. Today, the enhanced version of the app features 500 commonly used bedside and care advice phrases in Malay and the common Chinese dialects in Singapore – Hokkien and Cantonese. I am sure other dialects are being developed, including Hainanese and Hakka.

Closing

16   The challenges faced in today’s healthcare landscape, and the evolving role of a nurse is not unique to Singapore. This is why the ICN Congress is a useful platform for delegates to convene and discuss these issues that are close to our heart. In addressing these challenges, it is important to bear in mind that our solutions must continue to be patient-centric.

17   I would like to encourage all nurses to continue to learn, be a champion of change and make a difference.

18   Nursing is indeed an art, a work of the heart. I would like to thank all nurses for your contributions to healthcare, and for your devotion to this noble profession. I wish you all a fruitful and an enjoyable evening ahead. Thank you very much.