Friday, September 25, 2009

NHG ups ante on manpower training budget

Medical Tribune August 2009 SFIX
David Brill

The National Healthcare Group (NHG) is to invest an additional $1.3 million in training fellowships this year, the group’s chairman announced recently.

The funding boost will see 189 staff undergo specialist placements through the Health Manpower Development Plan (HMDP) awards – up from 138 recipients last year.

This year’s awardees comprise 75 doctors, 77 nurses, 23 health sciences professionals and 14 healthcare administrators.

“With the bar for healthcare being raised consistently, we need to relentlessly improve our healthcare delivery, to become the preferred healthcare provider in Singapore and the region. HMDP is, and will continue to be, one of the key anchors for NHG’s staff training and development efforts,” said NHG Chairman Madam Kay Kuok, who presented the awards in a ceremony at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).

Recipients of the HMDP award undergo training fellowships – often overseas – in skills and specialist areas which are not easily found in Singapore. The focus of this year’s awards is on health services and outcomes research, multi-disciplinary training, the ageing population and mass disasters and emergencies.

Previous winners “have done us proud,” said Kuok, highlighting the example of Dr. Sung Min, consultant in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at IMH. Sung established Singapore’s first public autism clinic at IMH in April 2006, having spent a month studying in the UK as part of her HMDP award the previous year. The clinic has now seen more than 650 patients.

The total budget for this year’s awards is S$5.7 million – co-funded by NHG and the Ministry of Health (MOH).

The HMDP was launched in 1980 by MOH, but administration has since been devolved to NHG and SingHealth.

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