M'sia Still Short Of Nurses, Says Chua

KOTA KINABALU, March 9 (Bernama) -- Although fewer Malaysian nurses are leaving for jobs overseas because of better remuneration at home, the country is still short of nurses, Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said Thursday.
"We used to lose a lot of nurses but now I understand that the trend is less, partly because our pay is better and with the new scheme introduced by the ministry last year where we give recognition to the nurses with degrees to have a different career path," he told reporters after opening the two-day 11th Joint Malaysia-Singapore and International Nursing Conference here.
The nursing workforce (for all categories) in the country has increased to around 60,000 people, giving an average ratio of 2.25 nurses per 1,000 population but for the staff nurse category alone Malaysia was still short of about 90,000, he said.
"We would need 174,000 of them (staff nurses) by 2020 if we wish to achieve the norm of one staff nurse to 200 population," he added.
Dr Chua said that was why the ministry had embarked on an aggressive drive to increase the annual output of staff nurses from its 17 training institutions which were expected to churn out 2,200 staff nurse graduates this year.
"A couple of years ago, we had only about 1,000-plus staff nurses graduating from the private sector. Today, we are expecting about 4,500 of them to graduate from five public universities and 23 private nursing colleges," he said.
This would provide a total of 6,700 nurses from the 45 institutions, which was not too far from the 8,400 that the government needed to produce each year over the next 15 to 16 years for Malaysia to achieve the targeted nurse to population ratio of 1:200, he said.
The two-day conference is organised by the Health Ministry and the Sabah Nurses Associati