Setting Up Helpline and Oversight for Tripartite Framework for the Prevention of Abuse and Harassment in Healthcare

12 Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Coordinating Minister for Social Policies and Minister for Health whether the Ministry will consider establishing an independent and centralised helpline or oversight under the Tripartite Framework for the Prevention of Abuse and Harassment in Healthcare to enhance follow-up and accountability of internal reporting of abuse in all public healthcare institutions for all non-police cases.

The Senior Minister of State for Health (Dr Koh Poh Koon) (for the Coordinating Minsiter for Social Policies and Minister for Health): Mr Speaker, all public healthcare institutions have put in place internal mechanisms to ensure due follow-up of reported cases of abuse or harassment. These include protocols for immediate incident response and reporting, post-incident management including support provided to the affected staff, and follow-up actions against perpetrators.

The Tripartite Workgroup for the Prevention of Abuse and Harassment of Healthcare Workers, comprising the Ministry of Health (MOH), union and healthcare employers from public healthcare, community care and private healthcare sectors, also convenes regularly to share best practices on the management of abuse and harassment cases.

Mr Speaker: Mr Tan.

Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong (Hougang): Thank you, Mr Speaker and I thank the Senior Minister of State for the answer.

The reason why I filed this Parliamentary Question is arising from a concern expressed by a resident who is a medical professional working in a hospital. The concern of my resident is that there should be an independent and transparent process of handling feedback, not by the hospital in question, purely because the concern that perhaps the hospital may, in certain circumstances, take the side of the patient rather than the staff. And also, in addition to that, for more independent tracking and monitoring, whether from a patient point of view or from a staff point of view, there would be more independence if it is done on a centralised and by an independent authority or body, rather than a hospital in question. There may be some conflict of interest as well when it comes to that hospital.

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Thank you, Sir. I want to thank the Member for expressing some of the potential concerns and indeed, as he has a resident who has spoken to him on this. I should take this chance to also reiterate that MOH and the Government takes a zero-tolerance stance against abuse of any healthcare workers. I am aware that hospitals do even report perpetrators to the Police for further investigation and take actions against them.

The reason why it is important for the hospital to have an internal process is because the incident management itself does involve making an assessment on the perpetrator – sometimes, the perpetrator himself is the patient. And therefore, there are medical confidentiality issues to allow appropriate judgement on whether that action was something that ought to be taken to task for or if the patient is not compos mentis and he is actually not in the right frame of mind. And so, the action was committed actually because he has no self-control, because he could have mental illness, for example.

So, there are real reasons why we keep this process internal to the hospital, because they are in the best position to make a judgement.

If I can just illustrate this, there are three parts to incidence management.

First, is the immediate response and that involves actually dealing with, sometimes, the patient who is the one causing the harassment or the patient's next of kin. That has to be something that is dealt with onsite, not by an external third-party.

Secondly, is the reporting and review of the incidence. That is where I made the point earlier about reviewing the medical information behind this. The circumstances that led to the incident itself would involve some confidential information about the patient, for example.

The third is the post-incidence management and this is where the zero-tolerance stance by the institution is something that we emphasise to management within the hospitals.

So, I want to assure the Member, as well as all our healthcare workers, that incidents like these will be taken seriously. If there is a concern that the hospital has not been fair to the staff, they can escalate it to MOH, where we will take a separate independent review on this as well.

10.32 am

Mr Speaker: We have established a new record; 30 minutes of Question Time and we cleared 12 Parliamentary Questions. It goes to show, if supplementary questions and replies are succinct, what we can achieve.

Order. End of Question Time. The Clerk will now proceed to read the Order of the Day.

[Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), provided that Members had not asked for questions standing in their names to be postponed to a later Sitting day or withdrawn, written answers to questions not reached by the end of Question Time are reproduced in the Appendix.]