Today-Aug 10
The attrition rate among foreign nurses in the public sector more than doubled year on year to 14.8 per cent in 2021, Parliamentary Secretary for Health Rahayu Mahzam said in Parliament on Aug 2. Among local nurses working in the public sector, the attrition rate was 7.4 per cent in 2021, up from 5.4 per cent the previous year. Foreign nurses told TODAY that better pay and opportunities, as well as the ease of obtaining residency in other countries, were among the main reasons they decided to move abroad. But the exodus of foreign nurses has left local nurses here grappling with the worsening manpower crunch. Nurses TODAY spoke to cited better pay, a desire to live with their families and experiences with discrimination as some of the reasons behind the exodus of foreign nurses. In response to TODAY’s queries, Adjunct Associate Professor Tracy Carol Ayre, the group chief nurse at SingHealth, said that it has “ongoing efforts to train aspiring nurses and recruit new nurses”. “Beyond increasing manpower and support, we look into streamlining the work of our nurses through job redesign, continuous review of nursing processes and piloting various innovations to assist nurses in their work,” she added. This includes the use of robots, which can help to transport medication and medical specimens, to help “alleviate our nurses’ workload and enable them to focus on critical clinical duties or on spending more time caring for patients with more pressing needs”, she said. Read more at: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/better-opportunities-residency-foreign-nurses-leave-singapore-1966436
