Where the Brightest Healthcare Stars Shine
SingHealth, Singapore’s largest healthcare group and 16 healthcare institutions today honored 2,694 healthcare professionals for their outstanding contributions to the healthcare industry at the annual Singapore Health Quality Service Award. The national award, the first of its kind dedicated to the healthcare industry recognises the unique nature and demands of the healthcare industry. At the heart of healthcare are diverse groups of healthcare professionals who have worked hard to deliver the best possible care for patients. This award pays tribute and gives formal recognition to these service champions, all of whom have played in role in raising the service standards of public healthcare.
This year’s award saw a 5 per cent increase in participation which include the Eastern Health Alliance institutions – Changi General Hospital, St Andrews Community Hospital and Peacehaven Nursing Home as well as community hospitals and private institutions such as Ang Mo Kio-Thye Hua Kwan Hospital, Bright Vision Hospital, Renci Hospital, St Luke’s Hospital and ECON Medicare Centres and Nursing Homes.
Said Professor Tan Ser Kiat, Group Chief Executive Officer of SingHealth who organised the event, “Good service in public healthcare is not restricted to SingHealth institutions. Every patient deserves the best possible treatment and care, regardless of the hospital or institutions he or she goes to. The increase in participation is testament to the increasing recognition of this dedicated healthcare award. It also reflects the shared commitment to reinforce service excellence and boost patient satisfaction in the healthcare sector.”
All award winners were selected based on stringent criteria such as testimonials of extra mile acts for patients or colleagues, number of compliments and service awards received and contributions to team efforts in quality and service improvement. Superstar awards were conferred on top winners from the Clinician, Nursing, Allied Health, Ancillary and Administration categories. The Award also recognised Clinical Practice Improvement and Service Initiative Improvement Teams for their efforts towards process improvement, enhancement of patient outcome and patient safety. Winners were selected by a panel of judges comprised of SingHealth board members and external industry representatives.
[Pls refer to Annex A for profiles of Superstar and Best Teams winners.]
[Pls refer to Annex B for the panel of judges.]
Annex A
Singapore Health Quality Service Award 2012
Profiles of Superstar and Best Teams Winners
1. Superstar Award - Clinician Category
Associate Professor Tang Choong Leong
Head and Senior Consultant, Department of Colorectal Surgery
Singapore General Hospital
To others, A/Prof Tang may seem like a workaholic, working seven days a week. But the Head and Senior Consultant, who has been with SGH for 24 years, has never known any other way.
Known for visiting patients on Sundays and working through lunch, A/Prof Tang is lauded for his professional and genuine care. His personalised attention ensures physical and psychological comfort for every patient. His effervescent demeanour and gregarious sense of humour often keep spirits up.
A/Prof Tang also contributes to his discipline in many other ways. A member of many international and local professional societies, A/Prof Tang currently directs the Colorectal Cancer Patient Support and Education Group. He also leads the Singapore Polyposis Registry, and has authored over 50 articles.
A/Prof Tang is also a committed mentor who believes in nurturing his younger peers. To him, a mentor’s role is to guide and realign thinking. Looking after patients is a given, but it is even better if he can pass his skills on to the next generation.
2. Superstar Award - Clinician Category
Dr Loh Lih Ming
Consultant, Department of Endocrinology
Singapore General Hospital
Dr Loh Lih Ming, Consultant, believes in giving each of her patients the full attention that they deserve. Be it through drawing diagrams to explain treatments schematically, discussing patient scans or revisiting the same medical issue for the third time.
Dr Loh even keeps a folder of resources for her patients as she believes it is important to empower patients with trusted healthcare information. This little extra effort speaks of her commitment to service excellence.
Her sincere approach has touched many patients. She received the SGH CEO Service Award in 2010 and is a five-time recipient of the SGH Service with a Heart Award.
As Chairman of the SGH Volunteer Club, she plays an instrumental role in galvanising staff support for charitable events such as SGH Community Day and Project Groomover. The former brings together needy patients and their families through an array of health and wellness activities. The latter sees SGH volunteers visiting the needy to help clean and retrofit the homes to make them safer for elderly beneficiaries. For their outstanding efforts, the SGH Volunteer Club received the President’s Social Service Award in 2010.
3. Superstar Award - Nursing Category
Mr Lim Chuan Kah
Principal Enrolled Nurse
National Heart Centre Singapore
For Chuan Kah, heart-to-heart moments with patients can be a matter of life and death. When a patient went into cardiac arrest during a night shift in 2010, he immediately performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), saving the man’s life. As a frontline healthcare professional, Chuan Kah has to be ready to cope with such emergencies at all times and he is more than happy to bear this heavy responsibility.
Throughout his 25 years of service, Chuan Kah has forged close friendships with many of his patients. Ever ready to lend a listening ear and quick in anticipating the needs of patients, Chuan Kah impresses patients with his genuine care. A former patient whom he nursed back to health over a 9-month period was so appreciative of his service that she made it a point to personally deliver Christmas cards to him every year, until she passed away.
Chuan Kah cites his parents as an inspiration. His father instilled in him a volunteering mindset from an early age. Despite it being a female-dominated profession, Chuan Kah pursued nursing out of pure passion; it is a job that he takes pride in, which gives him great satisfaction.
4. Superstar Award - Allied Health Category
Ms Goh Ming Rong
Senior Physiotherapist, Department of Rehabilitative Services
Changi General Hospital
A torchbearer of exemplary care, Ming Rong believes it is important to see patients as individuals and not just their illnesses or disabilities. To better connect with patients, she makes it a point to remember their quirks and hobbies, listen to their needs and make them feel at home.
Recently, a programme she initiated, ‘Creating a Culture of Clinical Learning for Physiotherapists’, won the Hospital Management Asia 2011 Excellence Award. Designed to facilitate co-learning, the programme sees staff paired together to oversee outpatient cases and treatment in a more holistic manner.
Indeed, fostering a vibrant learning culture has improved team bonding and staff members are further motivated to keep abreast of latest developments to facilitate meaningful sharing. Ming Rong believes a culture that is open and communicative leads to good patient care and the opposite is stagnation.
5. Superstar Award - Administration Category
Ms Linda Lim
Manager, Admitting Services, Admission Office
Singapore General Hospital
A former nurse with 17 years’ experience, Linda has been working at SGH for close to 40 years. Her nursing background has given her an edge in medical knowledge and understanding the needs of patients. Linda shares that dealing with patients is not easy, with patients now having higher expectations, being more educated and more conscious about their bill size.
Under Linda’s stellar supervision, nearly half of her staff have attained the ‘Service with a Heart’ badge. For someone singlehandedly managing more than 65 staff, it is certainly an achievement to be proud of.
She has led a team to win a Gold award at the Team Excellence Symposium in 2010 with the project ‘FailSafe’, which looks into improving safekeeping procedures for inpatients.
With her firm but warm demeanor, it is care champions like her who have helped SGH maintain its service quality excellence.
6. Superstar Award - Ancillary Category
Ms Junaidah Bte Saat
Senior Patient Services Assistant
Changi General Hospital
For Junaidah, communication is key to service excellence. That is why she made an effort to pick up Mandarin and Hokkien to communicate with her patients. She is now able to converse in five languages and dialects to better serve the needs of non-English speaking patients.
Indeed, caring for the patients has become second nature to Junaidah, who has been in the healthcare industry for 21 years.
Her dedication to service can be traced back to an incident that occurred early in her career. At that time, mobile phones were not common, so to help a patient’s family contact their loved ones, Junaidah offered her own phone card for their use. What she felt was a small gesture made a big impact on the family. For her outstanding patient service, Junaidah was awarded the gold badge at CGH – the highest recognition given for service excellence. Since then, Junaidah has worn her gold badge with pride and leads by example with her infectious and positive mindset.
7. Best Team - Service Initiative Improvement
The Challengers
Singapore General Hospital
Orthopaedic consignment sets, which contain essential instruments needed for use in the Operating Theatre (OT), can weigh up to 17 kg. This was not only cumbersome for staff, it also placed them at risk for health-related problems. The SGH team devised a way to improve and streamline this critical process.
The trolley used in transporting the sets was given a major overhaul. First, clear transparent Perspex was layered to prevent tears in the packaging that would make the sterile instruments unusable. Next, the bulky trays used to contain the instruments were redesigned to be thinner and lighter. Each tray was also split into two smaller ones, allowing staff to handle them in an ergonomic, safe, and stress-free manner.
The greatest leap forward was the acquisition of trolleys equipped with motors, allowing the staff to transport the consignment sets efficiently. Careful sourcing helped the team to procure trolleys which met their stringent health and safety requirements.
The team also streamlined workflow processes through the use of coloured labels for different sets of instruments.
Through their efforts, the jobs of OT staff have become smoother, safer and easier. Most importantly, patient safety is ensured as treatment and surgery can be carried without undue delay.
8. Best Team - Clinical Practice Improvement
SAFEED
Changi General Hospital and Gracelodge Nursing Home
A team with a common passion to help the community came together to introduce a cost-effective approach to improve patient care for nursing home residents with swallowing difficulties.
Dr David Yong, Senior Aged Care Physician in Division Community Geriatrics and Ms Yang Huilin, a Speech Therapist, both from CGH, collaborated with nursing staff of Gracelodge Nursing Home to embark on SAFEED, a quality improvement project that was implemented over the course of 18 months.
Dr Yong noticed an increasing trend of nursing home patients being admitted to hospital due to chest infections related to feeding problems. Not only were these admissions costly, they also could have been avoided. The solution was clear: to get to the root cause by instilling proper and safe feeding techniques.
By using simple, low-tech and effective prevention methods, the team was able to reduce the incidences of pneumonia in the nursing home by more than half. The number of admissions for pneumonia to CGH’s A&E also reduced by 25 per cent.
The aim of this programme was also to promote better integration between hospitals and the nursing homes. Dr Yong pointed that the project is a vehicle for knowledge transfer between hospitals and step down care. Nursing homes face a lack of resources, yet they are critical for long-term patient care.
SAFEED is now looking to expand the team with more nurses and combine the treatment with dental care to further enhance care for patients.
Annex B
Singapore Health Quality Service Award 2012
Panel of Judges
Superstar Category
1. Mrs Christina Ong
SingHealth Board Member & Chairman of Service Excellence Committee (Lead Judge)
2. Mr Gerald Ee
SingHealth Board Member & Chairman Eastern Health Alliance
3. Mr Nolan Tan
Deputy CEO, TÜV SÜD PSB Learning Pte Ltd
4. Mrs Geraldine Ang
Deputy Director, Customer Relations, Ministry of Health
Team Category
1. Dr Chow Mun Hong
Director Quality Management, SingHealth Polyclinics (Lead Judge)
2. A/Prof Marcus Lee
Academic Director, Institute of Service Excellence, Singapore Management University
3. Mr Ng Hock Keong
Director, Service & Process Planning, Central Provident Fund Board
4. Dr Diana Tan
Director Quality Management, Changi General Hospital