Hospital staff who help patients find jobs receive Healthcare Humanity Award

SINGAPORE – With the support of the NHG Health Bounce Back Support Team, more than 130 patients have found jobs or got back on their feet after prolonged illnesses affected their employment prospects.

For their teamwork and commitment to patient care, the NHG team received the award for collaboration on Oct 23 at the 2026 Healthcare Humanity Awards ceremony.

NHG Health said that helping patients return to employment is as much a clinical responsibility as a social one, and this also helps patients regain their independence and confidence.

“Recovery is not complete until patients have the support, tools, and confidence to rebuild their working lives”, said Heidi Tan, senior principal occupational therapist with Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) and a member of the team.

The support team comprises 10 medical social workers and occupational therapists from TTSH, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and Yishun Community Hospital.

Patients they have helped include those who had been living for many years with conditions such as epilepsy, chronic kidney disease, chronic pain and depression.

Their ability to return to work had been affected by less visible and fluctuating symptoms, such as fatigue, pain and anxiety, which would affect their physical and psychological abilities to cope with work demands and sustain employment, said Tan.

Yet, many of them do not meet the permanent disability criteria for job support services, and are left to seek employment on their own, Tan added.

The NHG team collaborated with partners such as social enterprise Inclus and private company UEMS Solutions to help these patients with tailored employment support, including career coaching, vocational training, job placement, and ongoing employment support.

Within a year of the team’s formation in end-2023, they received 65 referrals. The number grew to 219 by the second year, and 275 by September 2026.

Of the referrals completed by September 2025, about 61%, or 134 patients, managed to get a job or were able to independently seek work.

A total of 20 teams received awards from President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the ceremony organised by MOH Holdings (MOHH).

The Healthcare Humanity Awards, which began in 2004, celebrate extraordinary individuals and teams whose actions reflect the deepest values of care. 

“Caring for people goes beyond treatment, to helping them to live with hope and dignity. Our award recipients show us what this means in practice,” President Tharman said in a press release.

Another 80 individuals received the Healthcare Humanity Award for their compassion, dedication, resilience and selflessness. They collected the award from Health Minister Ong Ye Kung.

One of the individual recipients was Darryl Tan, 41, principal resident physician with Ng Teng Fong General Hospital’s (NTFGH) psychiatry department.

Tan, who had to battle an aggressive form of lymphoma after being diagnosed with it in 2012, has worked to strengthen healthcare workers’ mental health, psychological safety and well-being.

He has also provided support individually to junior doctors in distress.

Tan once counselled a first-year doctor who had been lambasted by a patient’s caregiver. She shared with him that she felt most hurt after being accused of not caring for the patient, even though she had poured her heart into caring for her patients.

The incident fuelled his passion to support and advocate for fellow healthcare workers, Tan told The Straits Times.

“I see this same dedication to healthcare time and again in so many colleagues I work with in the hospital,” he said.

Wei Qiang is a correspondent at The Straits Times. He is on the health beat, with a special interest in healthcare policies.