KUALA LUMPUR – The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) has lauded the Health Ministry’s move to reassign nurses from specialist clinics to hospital wards to address staff shortages.
MMA president Dr Azizan Abdul Aziz views it as a “progressive effort” as it will encourage continued commitment to reshaping the healthcare workforce distribution.
If the move to reassign nurses is well implemented, Dr Azizan said that it may significantly reduce the workload in some of the hospital wards that were previously affected by a maldistribution of healthcare workers.
“We (also) hope that the positions vacated (in clinics) from reassignments will be promptly filled to prevent any disruptions to services and that there is an emphasis on the importance of training.
“Shortages in healthcare personnel have underscored yet again why it is important to digitalise our healthcare system to enable data-driven decisions as well as effective mapping and planning of our healthcare human resources,” she said in a statement today.
“We acknowledge that there may be initial challenges in addressing specialty-specific demands. However, given time, we are confident that the ministry will overcome them.
“We also believe that data-driven decisions and real-time monitoring will be the way forward for effective planning of workforce placement.”
Dr Azizan added that the association also believed that increased efficiency and productivity could be achieved through a digital system enabling data-driven decisions.
She also said that digitalisation would be crucial for both immediate and future planning of public healthcare human resources to ensure services catered to community needs.
“Healthcare services should be planned in response to the needs of the population; not determined by the size of budgets or the number of posts created.”
The association was responding to a news report yesterday citing a leaked memo in which the Health Ministry had reassigned all nurses from specialist clinics to government hospital wards, due to a shortage of nursing staff. – January 9, 2024