Effectiveness of Efforts to Attract More Singaporeans to Join Healthcare Industry

Ms Joan Pereira asked the Minister for Health (a) whether current measures to attract more Singaporeans to join the healthcare industry, especially in the public sector, have been effective; and (b) what is the breakdown on manpower growth in the industry for (i) clinical and (ii) non-clinical roles.

The Ministry adopts a multi-pronged approach to attract Singaporeans to join the healthcare industry, which includes engaging students early to pursue healthcare careers, offering Career Conversion Programmes to attract mid-careerists, redesigning jobs in healthcare and keeping remuneration competitive. We complement this local core with foreign healthcare workers, including nurses and support care staff.

In the last five years, we have grown our national healthcare workforce from about 100,000, to over 120,000. Clinical and patient-facing manpower grew from 85,000 to 98,000. Non-clinical manpower grew from 19,000 to 22,000. Amongst them, about 80% are Singapore residents. Today, one in 20 students choose to enrol in a healthcare course and hence, we are getting our fair share of the local talent pool that will help maintain a majority of Singaporeans amongst our healthcare workforce.

That said, we will have to continue to build up both the local and foreign manpower pipelines, in order to meet the growing demand for healthcare services in Singapore.