07-07-2025
More nurses to anchor care in community settings as Singapore's population ages
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Minister for Health and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies Ong Ye Kung speaks at the Nurses' Merit Award ceremony in Shangri-La Hotel, on July 7.
SINGAPORE - More nurses will be trained to anchor care in community care settings, take on leadership roles in nursing homes as well as delivering end-of-life care in the community to cope with a rapidly aging population, said Mr Ong Ye Kung, Health Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Polices.
'If community care is effective… I think we will be able to detect health concerns as early as possible. And if we can detect (them) early, the conditions will be less severe, intervention will be as simple as possible,' he said.
He was speaking at the 2025 nurses' merit award held at the Shangri-La Hotel in Orange Grove Road on July 7. There, he conferred the awards on 141 nurses who had performed exceptionally well and contributed to raising the nursing profession.
Three nursing roles will be scaled up to strengthen care in the community, where there is a growing need, including nurses at community health posts.
Right now, some 90 per cent of the Active Ageing Centres (AACs) have Community Health Posts (CHPs), where nurses set up on a weekly basis. Mr Ong said the extensive outreach of the AACs needs to be tapped for preventive or continual care to reach the seniors, through the CHPs.
This will complement hospital acute care, strengthen Singapore's preventive care strategy Healthier SG and the work of family doctors.
Each day, there are six kidney failure patients and 60 heart attack and stroke patients, and if the CHPs can help those who are unaware of their condition or reluctant to seek help, the numbers can be lowered, he pointed out.
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'Nurses in CHPs will need to establish yourselves as the first point of contact for residents with chronic conditions, preventive health needs, or emerging symptoms,' he said.
They will be able to conduct assessments, provide health counselling to patients, and ensure that patients are adhering to their health plans prescribed by their Healthier SG doctor.
'They see their Healthier SG doctor maybe once or twice a year. In between, they can see our nurses at CHPs,' said Mr Ong.
With training, CHP nurses can also conduct social prescribing (helping patients to improve their health and well being by connecting them to community services) and referrals and manage patients with stable mental health conditions, he said.
A system is also needed to provide community nurses with the relevant backend information and advisory support so that they can operate independently, and with as much autonomy as possible, he said,
In long-term care, the Health Ministry has been upskilling the nurses in nursing homes to better care for patients to minimise the chances of patients having to move to acute hospitals and back. Now, it wants to strengthen the process by training more nurse clinicians to lead the care in long-term residential care settings.
Mr Ong said Nurse Clinicians need to be empowered , particularly Advanced Practice Nurses who are practising at the apex of the profession.
MOH is working towards allowing Nurse Clinicians, starting with APNs, to assess and initiate first-line treatments or medications and conduct six-monthly chronic reviews within defined protocols in nursing homes. This will help to minimise hospital admissions and emergency department visits, resulting in fewer transitions, improving quality of care, he explained.
Furthermore, more nurses will be trained to deliver end -of-life care in the community.
To scale up the three roles, not only will training need to be enhanced, a more flexible regulatory approach will be needed, he said.
For example, if the vision is to enhance the role of community nurses to provide more comprehensive care as early and as close to home as possible, then MOH will need need to review the nurses' scope of practice, equip them with advanced skills and create clear patterns or collaborative care.
'If, as regulators, we disallow this evolution of practice, then the needs of an ageing population will not be met,' said Mr Ong.
Also, manpower upgrading will be made easier, with working nurses able to take up courses lasting a few weeks or a couple of months, and then applying them at the workplace immediately.
The two polytechnics delivering three advanced and specialist diploma programmes in palliative nursing, in both part-time and full-time formats, will be shifting these programmes to a work-study format in 2027, Mr Ong said.
On Monday , the 141 nurses who received the merit awards each received a medal to wear on their uniform and a cash prize of $1,000.
Nurses at the Nurses' Merit Award ceremony in Shangri-La Hotel, on July 7.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
One of them is Azhar Mohd, a 56-year-old nurse clinician from Singapore General Hospital with 34 years of nursing experience.
Based at the hospital's Ambulatory Endoscopy Centre, he has developed training programmes for new endoscopy nurses. He has also been a lecturer for the Specialist Diploma in Endoscopy at Nanyang Polytechnic since 2018.
Endoscopy is a procedure in which an instrument is introduced into the body to give a view of its internal parts and look out for diseases.
Ms Megawati, 39, a nurse clinician from NUHS Regional Health System Office, has contributed to improving the transitional care for patients moving from the community to nursing homes, which reduced the frequency of their hospital re-admissions.
As a community nurse, on any given day, she might be heading to a patient's home to assess for risk of falls or help them manage their chronic issues for instance, or to Community Health Post to do the same.
Ms Megawati, a nurse clinician from NUHS Regional Health System Office, heads a team of 11 nurses who are now focusing on helping the residents in Chua Chu Kang with their health.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
'When you step inside the home, you can see their challenges and how to help them better,' said the mother of two.
Ms Megawati, who spent 18 years studying part-time for a Bachelor's degree in nursing that she obtained last year, heads a team of 11 nurses who are now focusing on helping the residents in Chua Chu Kang with their health.
Ms Tan Nengping, 61, a senior nurse manager from the Health Promotion Board who leads three school health screening teams is another winner.
She led efforts to develop a more efficient system for the equipment and surgical inventory such as swabs for HPB's Youth Preventive Health Service department.
