SINGAPORE - At least 4,000 nurses were hired to work in public healthcare institutions in 2023, making up for those who left the country or the profession during the pandemic, as well as helping to meet the growing healthcare needs of the ageing nation.
A Ministry of Health (MOH) spokesman told The Straits Times that the ministry hired about 4,000 new nurses in 2023.
About 3,400 new nurses were registered in 2022, he added.
In July 2023, MOH said public healthcare clusters had recruited about 2,000 new nurses through intensified local and overseas recruitment in the first half of the year, and were expected to hire another 2,000.
This would make up for the higher attrition in the past two years and cater to rising demand, the ministry said.
Singapore experienced a higher attrition rate of foreign nurses in 2021 and 2022, as borders reopened and the global competition for healthcare professionals intensified.
Most of the foreign nurses here are from the region, including the Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar.
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In 2022, the number of Filipino registered nurses dropped to 4,909 from 5,407 in 2021. Malaysian registered nurses totalled 2,117, down from 2,321 in 2021, while registered nurses from Myanmar dipped to 880 from 922 in 2021, according to data from the Singapore Nursing Board.
There were 43,772 nurses and registered midwives in Singapore in 2022, with 36,995 of them registered nurses.
About 75 per cent of the registered nurses in 2022 were Singaporeans or permanent residents. Some 13 per cent were Filipinos, followed by those from Malaysia (5.7 per cent) and Myanmar (2.4 per cent). The rest came from India (1.3 per cent), China (1.27 per cent) and elsewhere.
The MOH spokesman said the annual inflow of new nurses has consistently been higher than the outflow of nurses.
“We expect this trend to continue,” he added.
MOH will also continue to boost the local workforce with foreign nurses.
“While we have expanded our local training pipelines, we still need to augment our healthcare workforce with foreign nurses,” said the spokesman.
“For those who have performed well and are committed to Singapore, we will continue to grant them permanent residency (PR) status. Between 2018 and 2022, around 700 foreign nurses were granted PR status each year.”
MOH did not provide a breakdown of the numbers by year, but in July 2023, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said more foreign nurses were granted PR status in the past year in recognition of the essential role they played in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic and supporting Singapore’s growing healthcare needs.
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Dr Kelvin Tan, head of the Minor in Applied Ageing Studies programme at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, said any additional hires would be of help to public healthcare institutions, but the long-term strategy lies in promoting the Healthier SG programme and urging Singaporeans to lead a proactive healthy lifestyle to reduce their healthcare needs.
“Singapore will not be able to produce enough nurses to supply the increasing local needs resulting from an ageing population and improved life expectancy. We are victims of our own success in attaining Blue Zone status,” he said.
Singapore was named the sixth Blue Zone in the Netflix series Live To 100: Secrets Of The Blue Zones, which debuted on Aug 30, 2023.
These are places with the highest life expectancies in the world. In 2022, life expectancy in Singapore rose to an average of 83 years – almost a year higher than a decade ago.
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Singapore has been relying on a pool of foreign nurses to augment the local workforce, but this cannot be a long-term strategy, especially since the populations in neighbouring countries are also ageing rapidly.
While more have left the country in recent years, retaining foreign nurses has always been a big challenge for Singapore, Dr Tan said.
“Unfortunately, some foreign nurses treat Singapore as a launching pad to a career in other countries, which offer better conditions for them and even their family members,” he added.
“As a small island with limited space and a high cost of living, we are not appealing to this highly mobile workforce.”
Dr Jeremy Lim, a public health specialist, said the nursing situation on the ground seems to have improved, due to many factors, including the stabilisation of the exodus of nurses, especially foreign ones, from Singapore.
However, it is not just about finding new nurses to meet the demand, but also about the absorptive capacity of the system, he added.
“All health professionals, including nurses, don’t hit the ground running, and need an appropriate period of supervision and mentoring, the specifics of which would depend on training and prior experience,” said Dr Lim.
“Hence, whatever our ‘spreadsheet ambitions’, we need to be clear-eyed about how many new nurses the system can successfully onboard, train and assimilate in what time period, and then plan the injection of nurses based on this.”
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Meanwhile, MOH has been adding hospital beds to help alleviate the bed crunch, saying in October 2023 that it had added 500 beds and was on track to open around 800 more beds by the end of 2023.
Tan Tock Seng Hospital Integrated Care Hub, which offers various step-down care services, including palliative care, opened in early October 2023.
This was followed by the partial opening of Woodlands Health, Singapore’s newest integrated acute and community hospital, in late December.
With every bed, the need for nurses rises. Dr Tan said expanding the use of healthcare technology to help replace repetitive tasks can help to reduce burnout among healthcare workers.
“Bolder programmes on the implementation of smart health systems can ease long-term challenges of workforce drought,” he said.
Dangling more carrots like bursaries or scholarships to attract more students to join the nursing profession, and encouraging more retired nurses to offer their services to care for fellow Singaporeans, will also help, he noted.
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4,000 nurses hired in 2023 for Singapore’s public hospitals as attrition rate rises
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