Shortage of Local Doctors in Singapore
Ministry of HealthSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns the shortage of local doctors and the strategies implemented to manage medical manpower needs for Singapore's ageing population. Ms Foo Mee Har enquired about medical career prospects, the landscape of specialisations, and the extent of reliance on foreign doctors. Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong replied that local medical intakes reached 471 in 2016 and noted that 84% of the 13,000 registered doctors are local. He highlighted that schemes for overseas-trained Singaporeans have doubled annual returns, while recruitment of foreign doctors is expected to moderate as the local core grows. To meet future demand, the Ministry of Health is using dialogue sessions to guide junior doctors toward generalist disciplines like Family Medicine and Geriatric Medicine.
Transcript
17 Ms Foo Mee Har asked the Minister for Health (a) whether there is a shortage of local doctors in Singapore; and (b) if so, what is the Ministry doing to help (i) students better assess the prospects of pursuing medicine as a career (ii) young doctors better understand the landscape of specialisations that the country needs and (iii) the public to better understand the extent of Singapore's dependence on foreign doctors.
Mr Gan Kim Yong: As at 31 December 2016, there were about 13,000 registered doctors in Singapore, with a strong local core of 84% local doctors. As our ageing population will continue to drive demand for medical manpower, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has been working with the Ministry of Education to review and plan our local medical training pipelines to meet Singapore's future healthcare needs.
The local medical intakes have increased from 354 in 2012 to 471 in 2016 and is projected to grow to 500 in 2018. Besides growing local intakes, we are also attracting more Singaporean doctors trained overseas to return and practise in Singapore through the Pre-Employment Grant (PEG) and Relocation Incentive (RI) introduced in 2010. Since inception, about 900 PEGs and 300 RIs have been awarded. The number of newly registered overseas-trained Singaporean doctors returning annually has doubled from 92 in 2012 to 182 in 2016.
While we have increased the pipelines of local doctors, foreign doctors are needed to supplement the local pool. With more Singaporeans joining the medical workforce, we expect the recruitment of foreign doctors to moderate going forward.
With an ageing population, the type of disciplines in demand will shift towards the more generalist disciplines, such as Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Geriatric Medicine. MOH has shared with medical students and junior doctors through dialogue sessions and medical residency briefing sessions on this shift. We will continue to raise awareness of the changing postgraduate training needs amongst junior doctors and medical students.