Language, Orientation and Immersion Programmes for Foreign Healthcare Professionals

Mr Yee Jenn Jong asked the Minister for Health (a) what content is covered in the language, orientation and immersion programmes for foreign healthcare professionals and what is the duration of such programmes; (b) how many foreign healthcare staff have attended these programmes each year in the last five years; and (c) what percentage of total foreign healthcare staff does this participation represent.

Public healthcare institutions have put in place programmes to familiarise foreign healthcare staff with the local clinical practice, language and cultural contexts, so as to help them adapt to the local working environment.

These programmes cover a broad spectrum of topics, including Singapore's history, culture, policies and regulations, overview of healthcare in Singapore, workplace safety as well as practical resource information and general advice for living and working in Singapore. The programmes typically range from half a day to one day and all newly recruited foreign staff without prior working experience in Singapore are strongly encouraged to attend them.

Language courses are also provided where necessary to enable better patient-staff communications. These include training in basic conversational Mandarin, Malay and Chinese dialects and the training duration per course is about 30 hours or more over several weeks. In addition, institutions also run orientation programmes for all new employees.

The participation rate in such programmes in each institution varied depending on the profile and roles of foreign staff in each institution. Almost all staff participated in the orientation programmes. For language programmes, about 35% of foreign staff recruited in the last five years had participated in at least one language programme. Some of the foreign staff have been in Singapore for some time and are already familiar with our language and culture

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and, therefore, do not need to attend such programmes.

Our public healthcare institutions will continue to encourage foreign healthcare staff to attend such programmes and to explore more ways to help them adapt to their working environment, so that they can better contribute towards the delivery of public healthcare in Singapore.