Ask the PM

Ask The PM. Singapolitics.sg

Ask the PM 31 August 2012 Friday 5:57pm

Ask the PM

1. The core values of nursing is care and professionalism. But during my stay in the stigmatised Institute of Mental Health/Woodbridge hospital in the years of 2009 - 2012, some examples of bullying and terrorising I experience in here from nurses are: costaping patients' mouth, kicking and climbing on top of patients and singing happily to taunt patients that they can't go home. These nurses need a record to go after them and like a criminal who cross over the legal line, these type of nurses should have some measures to deal with them. There should be a strict form of regulation that the nurses perform to their best of their professionalism. What kind of legal framework could be in place for nurses who mistreat/bully their patients? Could a greater and standardised punishment or striking out of misbehaviour in the nursing profession be centralised and established?

2. Could the Institute of Mental Health have more spot checks? Apart from spot checks, what kind of whistle-blowing acts can be done as part of the service and health care industry's to flush out errant services? And how can we flush out errant services and maintain it?

3. What more could be done to protect the wills and rights of mentally ill patients in the Institute of Mental Health? Or other mental hospitals per se

4. Can more transparency be meted out to mental hospitals? We seldom see what really happens to the people staying inside the Institute of Mental Health. It could be other mental hospitals as well. (But IMH being the main mental healthcare institution..) Could the government break the barrier between “normal” people and mentally ill to the gracious society and care-needed mental patients?

5. How can we break the stigma of mental illness in Singapore just like how we break the second prison of ex-convicts in the Yellow Ribbon? How can we better communicate between the stories of the mentally ill and the “sane”?

6. How can we broadly make known the side of the mentally ill patients in Singapore and let people know about the lesser known individuals? How can we not keep mental illness and it’s related things in the dark?

7. How can we build a more liberal and acceptive society? Especially in the area of accepting, caring and integrating mental patients in Singapore?