SINGAPORE – During a volunteer trip to a Sri Lankan hospital in August 2023, Clinical Assistant Professor Ng Wai May saw local healthcare staff tying down the fingers of patients with neurological disorders so that they would not pull out medical tubes.
Aware that restraints of this sort impede blood circulation and cause discomfort, Prof Ng, who is the National Neuroscience Institute’s director of nursing, and her team had brought with them mittens as an alternative way to stop the patients from pulling out inserted tubes.
“On our next trip to the same Sri Lankan hospital six months later, (we noticed that the hospital had) actually produced its own mittens locally, which are 10 per cent of the cost of those from Singapore,” said Prof Ng, who is also an advanced practice nurse.
The experience gave her a new perspective on how to innovate with limited resources in a healthcare setting.
“The local handmade mitten is a success story. It’s things like this that really inspire me and make me want to do a little bit more,” Prof Ng added.
To expose nurses to different healthcare systems around the world, SingHealth on July 25 launched the Centre for Global Nursing (CGN) at the Singapore General Hospital campus during a celebration for the upcoming Nurses’ Day on Aug 1.
CGN’s programmes are available to SingHealth’s 13,000 nurses.
One of them is a three-month online course in collaboration with the University of Sydney which the centre hopes can benefit around 200 nurses in the next year and a half.
The course covers social, environmental and economic issues that affect the health of different populations.
Associate Professor Sabrina Koh, who heads CGN, told The Straits Times that for the last two decades, Singhealth has been engaged in collaborative programmes in different clinical domains with other countries.
Given Singapore’s medical and training excellence, many overseas institutions are keen to learn the workflows and protocols of Singapore’s public healthcare system, she said.
Separately, SingHealth nurses with an interest in humanitarian and overseas work had in the past paid their own way to attend overseas healthcare programmes.
With the new centre, the nurses will be exposed to regional and international healthcare professionals and institutions, with opportunities to be involved in hosting foreign delegates and also attending overseas trips, but in a more formalised way.
“The nurses can also build their contributions into their own career path. With the centre, nurses also don’t have to come up with their own resources to support an overseas initiative, such as their own annual leave or money in some cases,” said Prof Koh, who is also the deputy director of nursing at Sengkang General Hospital.
The centre has connections with more than 150 healthcare institutions in the region, including countries such as Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and China.
The new centre provides nurses with a platform to contribute beyond Singapore by learning and sharing best practices in different countries and clinical environments.
Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said at the launch of the CGN that even as Singapore builds up its local nursing core to serve the country’s population, it can help others in the region.
Countries like Indonesia, Laos and Cambodia need to ensure that healthcare reaches every island and village for the welfare of their people.
“We don’t have the manpower to help them deliver (healthcare coverage), but we have the ability and capability to train their nurses and help some of their citizens come here to train, to achieve a certain level of professional accomplishment,” said Mr Ong.
