One of the largest projects that the country of Singapore has been focusing on is improving their healthcare offerings for residents of all ages and backgrounds. From creating more hospitals that are widely accessible to ensuring that there is government assistance in place for people that need it, the healthcare regime is said to get revitalization in the coming years. One of the main focuses of the government is to hire an influx of healthcare workers that can accommodate the growing populations and need for medical care by 2020.
During the parliament meeting on the 1st of March 2016, concerns were raised about the amount of healthcare workers available per person in Singapore. According to MP Leon Perera, the concern is that there are far more residents than there are healthcare workers, leaving an unfair gap that leads people to not seek medical treatment simply because they don’t have access to a sufficient amount of healthcare. In response to these concerns, Minister of State for Health, Chee Hong Tat advised that Singapore has a plan to add an additional 20,000 healthcare workers by 2020.
This is fantastic news that comes at the perfect time, as one of the main concerns of the country is their healthcare. Although they are known to have some of the highest standards of care, Singapore is also notorious for their decreased amount of healthcare staff. For example, there were only 21 doctors and 69 nurses per 10,000 people based on a 2014 census. This has lead many to believe that this additional influx of healthcare workers is said to help fill the void, when in reality, it’s not. The government has decided to hire the 20,000 healthcare workers to help accommodate the growing amount of elderly individuals throughout Singapore.
The government has repeatedly stated that they are always looking for ways to be innovators and to look ahead so that they are always anticipating the next step. This hiring is going to give them the ability to allocate a sufficient amount of resources to the growing elderly populations to ensure that they have reasonable access to healthcare whenever it is necessary. There are 3 main strategies that the government wants to put in place.
The first strategy is to make sure that healthcare workers can stay employed until an older age, second, they want to get funding for mid-career healthcare professionals that need to take training courses to learn new techniques. They also want to give prospective healthcare professionals access to funds to help accommodate their living expenses while they are studying to become doctors. Third, there will be over 630 different pre-employment grants available to healthcare professionals that are studying in either dentistry or medicine overseas. The main clause of these grants is that the students will have to return to Singapore to become doctors after they have graduated. With these strategies, they will easily be able to entice more individuals to get the training necessary to become doctors and to help residents in their country.
About the Author
Morris Edwards is a content writer at A1 Business Pte Ltd, he writes different articles related to business in Singapore. If you need Singapore Virtual Office address, namecard and print services visit a1corp.com.sg