Actress Rachel Wan says the doctor told her that her father died alone because Singapore hospital was understaffed

SINGAPORE: Actress Rachel Wan, who recently moved to Sydney, Australia, said in a video uploaded over Instagram that when her father died in 2022 in Singapore, he was all alone.

At the time of his passing, Ms Wan and other family members were getting tested for COVID-19, which was a requirement as her father was being moved from the emergency ward to the general ward. But by the time they got to his room after the tests, unfortunately, her father had already passed away.

 

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Ms Wan asked the doctor why they had not even been informed that her father was gone; he apologised but told her that the hospital was understaffed.

In her Aug 26 video, she said that she was about to share something that she’d been wanting to talk about for a while, prefacing it by saying that she had moved to Australia due to the better work-life balance.

She had met a nurse who used to work in Singapore but had since relocated to Australia, and just so happened to have been employed while in Singapore in the hospital where Ms Wan’s father had passed away.

The actress said the stories that the nurse shared about the difference in life-work balance blew Ms Wan’s mind.

“For example, a nurse in Singapore can be assigned up to 12 patients to handle at any one time, whereas in Australia, there’s a limit of only six patients per nurse. So they can only handle those six patients.”

She added that nurses in Australia need to rest for a certain number of hours before being assigned another shift, whereas in Singapore, this is not the case.

This information triggered Ms Wan, as it reminded her of the occasion of her father’s passing. She had stood with him as she wanted to be with him at his very last breath but was not given the opportunity to do so.

“I wanted him to know that he’s not alone when he goes,” she said tearfully in the video.

She said later that she is aware that this is not the only industry in Singapore where this is the case.

“Overworking is not an achievement. Having no work-life balance is not an achievement… Something about that has to change in Singapore.” /TISG

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