Forum: Building a stronger healthcare workforce means looking beyond headcount
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The article “More physiotherapists opting to work in private healthcare – can the public sector keep up?” (July 6) raises workforce questions worth examining beyond headcount.
Singapore’s population is ageing rapidly, with 20.7 per cent of citizens now aged 65 and above. This is projected to rise to almost one in four by 2030, according to the National Population and Talent Division. In addition to demographic shifts, there is increasing demand for physiotherapy in geriatric care, and stroke, cardiovascular disease, cancer and orthopaedic rehabilitation.
The Singapore Institute of Technology’s rising intake is welcome, but whether this closes the gap or merely slows its widening is worth tracking, since public sector growth has not kept pace with private sector uptake.
The reported attrition figures are not stratified by seniority, and this matters. Experience is not simply more of the same labour. Across clinical disciplines generally, higher-experience teams tend to show better outcomes.
As physiotherapy becomes increasingly embedded in surgical, oncological, neurological, cardiac and geriatric care, senior therapists play critical roles in supervising junior colleagues, managing complex patient cases, refining rehabilitation pathways and maintaining standards of care.
The article touches on why physiotherapists move to private practice _ citing career preferences and the expansion of private healthcare. Workforce retention is influenced not only by remuneration, but also by opportunities for teaching, research, leadership and academic progression.
Many overseas healthcare systems have established clinician-academic pathways that allow experienced physiotherapists to combine clinical practice with education and research. Expanding similar career pathways in Singapore may prove as important as increasing student intake in retaining experienced practitioners within the public sector.
A workforce should be evaluated by depth of experience and structural pathways for retaining it, not headcount alone.
Shridhar Ganpathi Iyer
