SINGAPORE: The Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Jurong Community Hospital have
unveiled some new features that will help to improve processes and provide a
conducive environment for patients as well as their caregivers.
The commemorative superstructure
signing ceremony between Jurong Health Services (JurongHealth) and GS
Engineering & Construction was officiated by Health Minister Gan Kim Yong
on Saturday morning.
It signifies a joint commitment
to build a seamless integrated healthcare hub.
The Ng Teng Fong General Hospital
will see the first Intensive Care Medicine Department in Singapore which will
streamline care by combining the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and High Dependency
(HD) unit.
It will cut across different conventional
ICUs such as surgical, medical, cardiac and neurosurgical.
The ICU will adopt a
multi-professional team approach, involving critical care nurses, respiratory
therapists, physiotherapists, critical care dietician and pharmacist.
This will allow flexibility
between the ICU and HD units and will reduce the need for physical and care
team transfers.
This means that intensive care
patients whose condition have improved will be seamlessly managed as high
dependency patients in the same room, cared for by the same team.
CEO of JurongHealth Foo Hee Jug
said: "The first benefit we get is optimisation of resources. ICU are
expensive assets within a hospital. When we put it under one single management
and one single space, we can optimise it from a perspective of having the ICU
under one managment through the Intensive Care Medicine Unit.
"We actually would be able
to standardise care, have one point of contact for our patients and their
caregiver and overall we think care is going to improve."
The hospital also prides itself
with "a window for every patient" concept as it believes that access
to natural lighting provides a conducive environment for patients' healing
process.
Its Emergency Department is also
designed for faster care, shorter waiting time and is scalable to accommodate
an anticipated increase in patient load.
To prevent bottlenecks, it will
have a central registration desk replaced with kiosks and greeters, bedside
registrations and documentation.
Dr Quek Lit Sin, senior
consultant and head of JurongHealth's Emergency Medicine Department, said:
"Patients coming through the emergency department want to see a healthcare
professional -- be it a nurse or a physician.
"We try to put these
healthcare professionals right upfront, meaning they will attend to the patient
as quickly as possible, not making them register, not making them wait for the
next step in the whole consultation process, but actually address their
problems right from the beginning and try to allocate resource as quickly as
possible for these patients, meaning they will get treatment as soon as
possible."
The Emergency Department is also
designed to be trauma-ready to step up to any crisis involving mass casualty or
hazardous materials incidents in nearby Jurong Island.
With Singapore's ageing
population, the hospital will also have built in elder-friendly features such
as handrails and large face clocks.
The community hospital will also
have a purpose-built 3-room HDB flat mock-up rehabilitative zone so that the
elderly can get the necessary skills to return to their daily activities upon
discharge.
One challenge for the hospital
would be manpower, as it needs some 4,000 healthcare workers.
Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong
said: "For the immediate near term, we will still need to depend on
foreign manpower to help supplement the local manpower.
"For doctors, for example,
we are also reaching out to Singaporeans who are studying overseas and through
our pre-employment grant, we want to attract more Singaporeans to come back to
serve in Singapore."
"We will also look at how we
can tap onto the resources of the various hospitals in Singapore. Today, for
example, the National University Hospital is helping Ng Teng Fong to build up
its manpwer needs," Mr Gan added.
"So we will go to many
different avenues to try our best to recruit locals."
Mr Gan said his ministry will
continue discussions with the Ministry of Manpower and various government
agencies to see how MOH can have access to foreign manpower to meet its needs
in the short term.
Vimita Mohandas
- CNA/al/wm
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