Areas of Focus Identified by Future Nursing Career Review Committee

Assoc Prof Fatimah Lateef asked the Minister for Health whether the principles of inter-professional education and practice will be incorporated into the three strategic areas of focus identified by the Future Nursing Career Review Committee in developing a future-ready nursing workforce.

Inter-professional education and practice are integral to our education and training of nurses. For example, degree nursing students at the National University of Singapore have joint learning and training sessions with medical and pharmacy undergraduates on inter-professional communication and teamwork. They are also taught advance care planning with social work students. Nanyang Polytechnic organises an annual "Inter-professional Day" where students from health science disciplines, including nursing and social work, form teams to work on case scenarios and projects together. At our Institutes of Technical Education, students in nursing undergo simulations of team-based care comprising doctors and nurses. All nursing students will also experience team-based care during their clinical attachments in our public healthcare institutions.

As part of continuing education and training efforts, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and allied health professionals in our public healthcare institutions will undergo joint training on areas, such as crisis management, patient safety and emergency resuscitation. In addition, the Ministry of Health has been sponsoring close to 50 in-employment nurses every year to undergo team-based skills training overseas.

Going forward, the principles of inter-professional education and practice will be incorporated into the implementation of the three strategic areas of focus identified by the Future Nursing Career Review Committee. The first area of focus is care, which is about enabling nurses to focus more on patient care through job and process redesign. This will entail a streamlining of inter-professional and team-based processes to achieve better care and nursing productivity.

The second area of focus is community, which is about strengthening community nursing. Community nurses will be equipped with nursing care competencies to meet patients’ needs by working with inter-professional teams at the primary, transitional, home, as well as long-term care settings.

The third area of focus is competency, which is about developing broad-based nursing competencies and preparing nurses to practise team-based care across different settings. This work will be undertaken by a committee involving representatives from various professional groups in order to incorporate an inter-professional perspective in the review of the nursing education and training framework.