No additional measures will be introduced to cap the working hours of healthcare workers, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Monday.
MOH was responding to a written question in Parliament by Louis Ng, a PAP MP for Nee Soon GRC, who asked:
In their written response, MOH said:
The Ministry does not intend to impose any additional caps on the working hours for healthcare workers beyond what is already stipulated in the Employment Act or the public healthcare cluster’s employment contracts.
The Ministry also stated that for junior doctors, “there are existing hospital guidelines such as total allowable work hours per week and the provision of sufficient rest periods.” They advised that “Public healthcare institutions should put in the necessary efforts to adhere to these guidelines.”
The Ministry continued:
The experience with the pandemic has shown us that there will be times where healthcare workers will be subject to exigencies of service. Flexibility in deploying healthcare workers is important to ensure that our public healthcare clusters can manage the operational needs on the ground.
Past Statements by MOH
A similar statement was issued by MOH in January 2022 in response to another Parliamentary question. In their response, MOH said that,
The Ministry does not impose a hard cap on the number of working hours and number of call backs, or enforce mandatory taking of annual leave. As the recent COVID-19 surge has shown, there will be times when there are exigencies of service that public healthcare clusters need to manage.
This being the case, the Ministry said that “public healthcare clusters are encouraged to allow staff to rest and recharge by taking days off whenever possible.”
In November 2021, it was revealed in Parliament that 1,500 healthcare workers had quit in the first half of the year.
For context, approximately 2,000 healthcare workers resigned each year in the preceding years. When we covered this story last November, we also noted that when Dr Janil Putucheary shared this sobering statistic in Parliament, he also shared the contents of messages he received from healthcare workers:
“We are getting increasingly stretched, overworked and fatigued… We are uncertain how long we can keep this up. Morale is slipping”
“Our people are exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally – whether they will admit it or not.”
Pages like sgnightingales, updatemeprn, and thehonesthealthcareworker on Instagram help shed light on the plight of Doctors and Nurses. These are the pages that are run by healthcare workers for healthcare workers.
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