Alumni nurses respond to Covid-19 pandemic: Valuing the opportunity to nurse again

Shahidah Suhaimy (left) and Joey Loh at the Singapore Expo Community Care Facility housing COVID-19 positive migrant workers.

A product manager and a diving instructor have returned to nursing in a time of pandemic, as they respond to the Ministry of Health’s call for former healthcare professionals to support the country’s fight against the coronavirus.

Joey Loh (BSN’09) and Shahidah Suhaimy (BSN’12) have rolled up their sleeves and joined the healthcare team at the Singapore Expo’s Community Care Facility (CCF) to care for migrant workers who are COVID-19 positive.

The former nurses say they volunteered because they have much to offer with their past experience, and felt a sense of responsibility to use their knowledge and expertise to support the fight against the disease in the nation’s COVID-19 hot spot – the foreign worker dorms.

Their return to nursing work came amid an island-wide call for former healthcare professionals to join the fight against COVID-19 and support medical workers as the latter grappled with a surge of patients. An unprecedented number of migrant workers have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and are seeking treatment at five community care facilities spread across Singapore.

Joey, 32, a product manager with a medical device distributor, used to work at the National University Hospital’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and last donned scrubs in 2013. Her current employer had given her permission to return to nursing work through weekend shifts at the Expo.

Joey (seated third from left) last donned scrubs in 2013 as a paediatric nurse at NUH.

Joey said she responded to the Ministry of Health’s call for support via the SG Healthcare Corps, which was set up in April 2020 to back the nation’s healthcare and community care workforce in the fight against COVID-19. On the website, former and current healthcare professionals can register their interest to be on standby for referral to areas of need in a variety of settings. These range from public healthcare, community care and primary care institutions to COVID-19 operations such as community isolation facilities, swab isolation locales and foreign worker dormitories.

Joey said she was surprised when she was activated, as an overwhelming number of responses had been received and many people were still waiting to be called up. When she was matched with an available position at the Expo, she didn’t hesitate to take it up. 

“I’d always wanted to show my appreciation to the migrant workers for their efforts in building Singapore. Nursing them at a time when they are unwell and vulnerable allows me to show them warmth in a foreign land. It’s an opportunity to give back to the migrant workforce and support my former healthcare colleagues,” she said.

Diving back into nursing

Similarly, Shahidah, 30, also ditched her diving suits for scrubs and full PPE to join healthcare workers at the front line of the coronavirus battle at the Singapore Expo. The former Registered Nurse at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital’s Medical and Cardiological ICU left her position in March 2016 to pursue a passion for diving and love of the ocean.

She became a diving instructor and was contracted all over the world, in places like Palau, Malta and Turks and Caicos Island. When the pandemic struck, she was just beginning a course as a conservation instructor with the New Heaven Reef Conservation Program based in Koh Tao, Thailand.

Shahidah left nursing in 2016 to pursue her passion for diving.

“When the outbreak happened, I knew that Singapore would need more nurses at some point. I felt increasingly inclined to do my part by returning and using my skills and training to the best I can to help my country,” she said.

Although tourism had begun to dry up, she took two weeks to decide if she should return home. “I could have stayed in Thailand but I felt compelled to return as my priorities had changed,” she said.

Although she was based overseas, Shahidah makes frequent trips back yearly to do locum nursing at local private hospitals. “I don’t think I’d ever given up nursing,” she said. “I left nursing to pursue my ambitions in diving, but almost every job I’d gotten in the diving industry had been a result of my nursing training,” she added.

When Shahidah returned to Singapore, she began contacting various locum agencies and was eventually matched to her current position at the CCF.

A call to care

Joey and Shahidah are both placed at Hall 4 of the CCF, where they report for duty a few days a week on 12-hour shifts, together with a team of 15 to 20 healthcare workers comprising Registered Nurses, Enrolled Nurses, Healthcare Assistants and doctors.

They provide care for a total of 480 patients in the Hall, who are predominantly male foreign workers from Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar and the Philippines. “These patients usually come into the CCF on Day 8 of their COVID-19 diagnosis,” said Joey. “The conditions at the Expo are pretty basic with most essential items available, and each patient has his own room and meals provided.”

When asked if they are nervous, Joey replied: “I was mainly worried for my father with whom I am living; however, he quarantined himself by staying at another house to be safe. But he was fully supportive of my choice to volunteer at the Expo.”

Shahidah said: “I am worried, because I obviously don’t want to catch the virus and I definitely don’t want to spread it. But I think our PPE protocols are sound. Only one nurse working at the CCF had tested positive, and even then, the source of infection was not linked to the CCF. I continue to self-isolate as much as possible and I try to visit my grandpa less frequently, preferring to use online methods of communication like WhatsApp video calls.”

Joey and Shahidah’s team takes care of the physical and mental health of 480 patients at Hall 4.

Addressing concerns that she may be a little rusty on her training, Joey said that getting back into the swing of nursing had not been difficult. “As patients are ambulatory, the nursing care required is not daunting and comprises mainly vital signs management and it’s easy to pick up. We are also given training on hand hygiene, mask fitting, PPE donning and doffing, and the daily workflow.”

She highlights an important mission of the nurses, which is not only to nurse the patients back to health but to support them psychologically. “As some patients do not have a dorm to go back to after discharge, they may stay at the CCF for up to 40 days. We have a couple of initiatives to maintain the well-being of the patients. We check in on the long-stayers to reassure them of their discharge status. Our staff have also introduced various activities such as badminton, colouring, board games and two daily exercise sessions to help them expend their energy and fight loneliness and solitude. There’s also a schedule of the daily activities so that they gain a sense of time in a hall where day and night are indistinguishable,” she said.

The coronavirus crisis has created a new normal for many, and for Shahidah, it has prompted her to stay in nursing after her time at the CCF. “I always knew I will come back to nursing. Being a nurse has always given me a good perspective on life and kept my focus on what is important,” she said, adding that she is currently waiting to begin work in the Emergency department of a restructured hospital.