The Singapore government has announced several initiatives to grow the country’s healthcare workforce
Amid and “an ageing population and growing chronic disease burden,” Senior Minister of State for Health Amy Khor announced in Parliament on Thursday several initiatives aimed at growing the country’s healthcare workforce, with the help of employers.
This year, employers will only have to fund about 10% of the cost for nursing training under the Professional Conversion Programme (PCP) from the current 20% to 50%, said Khor. According to the minister, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will further increase funding for nursing training.
The Government will also provide new on-the-job training support of $12,000 per mid-career enrolled nurse and $16,000 per mid-career registered nurse to employers. “The funding will encourage employers to admit more PCP-trained nurses and enable them to better support these nurses in their transition to a new career,” said Khor.
The MOH will also tap on the new “Attach and Train” scheme of the Ministry of Manpower to enable more mid-career Singaporeans to take up PCP nursing training.
Khor emphasized other non-clinical roles for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) in the healthcare sector, and said the government would support these as well. “Several public hospitals have created Basic Care Assistant positions to help nurses provide personal care to patients such as feeding and transferring. This will free up nurses’ time to concentrate on their clinical duties. MOH will be providing employers with on-the-job training support of $10,000 for each Basic Care Assistant hired.”
In a bid to bolster the aged care sector, the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) will enhance the Community Care Traineeship Programme (CCTP), which is a Place and Train programme, by including more structured bite-sized training.
MOH will provide on-the-job training support of $10,000 to employers for each new care worker, to better facilitate mentoring, supervision and development of the new hires.
“The positive news is that growth in the healthcare sector will bring many good jobs, clinical and non-clinical, and at different levels, for Singaporeans. In the next 3 years, we estimate that about 9,000 additional staff will be needed for new facilities and services in the public healthcare and aged care settings,” said Khor.
“Approximately 50% of these jobs are PMET level roles. These include nurses, therapists, administrative executives and operations managers.”