Healthcare professionals pay to be reviewed: MOH
In a bid to attract more people into the healthcare industry, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will be reviewing the salary structure of healthcare staff in the Committee of Supply debate next month, according to various local media.
Minister of State (Health) Amy Khor, who was speaking at a fair promoting careers in nursing and allied health, backed Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam's view that a "reasonable" salary has to be paid to attract more people to work in the medical profession due to manpower concerns, reported TODAY.
The review comes on the back of the Budget speech earlier this month, which unveiled government measures to expand public hospital capacity by adding 1,900 more general public hospital beds and 1,800 community hospital beds by the end of 2020.
Therefore, an additional 6,400 nurses and 1,800 allied health professionals and support staff will be needed to deal with the increase of hospital beds and patients, The Straits Times (ST) quoted Khor as saying on Sunday.
According to Today, Khor said that increasing salaries is not the only way to attract more healthcare professionals. As such, the government is looking into establishing new educational institutions and programmes for healthcare related fields.
In addition, MOH holdings, the National Healthcare Group and SingHealth will co-operate in offering scholarships and sponsorships to people who are interested to join the medical industry.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Chow, a nurse of four years welcomed the move by MOH to review the pay structure of medical professionals. "It will definitely be more attractive, especially to local nurses as currently our local nurses are looking for overseas options because of the [low] pay and the [high] nurse-to-patient ratio," she said.
According to Chow, the ratio of nurses to patients locally is currently 1:10 whereas the ratio overseas can be as low as 1:4.
When asked why people are unwilling to join the healthcare industry, Chow said, "There is a prevailing stigma related to our job as people generally have a bad misconception of nursing." The most common jibe nurses face, according to Chow, is whether they have to clear the bed pan. But she asserts that nurses have different duties, and "it really depends on which department you work in".
Chow explained that nurses in the ward do bedside patient care, which includes basic patient care, while since she is a nurse in the operating theatre, she mainly helps the surgeons with ongoing operations.
Chow added as an afterthought, that perhaps a lot of people look at nursing as a profession negatively. "People generally land into the nursing course in polytechnics after failing English or faring badly for their O levels," she said.
