KUALA LUMPUR: Nurses have been carrying out their duties for over 45 hours a week even before the 45-hour work week was introduced, says Datuk Lukanisman Awang Sauni (pic).
The Deputy Health Minister said this was due to previous work hours not accounting for break times and the unofficial passing over report times.
A passing over report refers to the written record on the essential information and responsibilities of patients that a nurse must produce at the end of their shift, which is passed to the incoming nurse for the next shift.
He explained that the planned 45-hour work week was meant to integrate this passing over report time into the nurse’s shift.
“The task handover (passing over report) will be considered part of the shift working hours, where it will be done at the last hour before the end of the current shift, along with the start time of the incoming nurse’s next shift.
“This ensures that nurses get adequate break time and that task handovers are carried out systematically, thus will not increase the workload for nurses,” he said in Dewan Rakyat on Thursday (Mar 6).
He added that the ministry will try to harmonise the planned 45-hour work week for nurses with Public Service Remuneration System (SSPA) provisions to achieve the best possible solution.
Lukanisman was responding to a question from Datuk Dr Alias Razak (PN-Kuala Nerus) on the ministry’s justification for the increase in nurses' working hours from 42 to 45 hours a week.
Alias had also asked the ministry on the statistics of medical assistants (MA) and nurses working in government hospitals by state from 2015 to 2024.
To this, Lukanisman revealed that there has been a significant increase in MAs in that period with the most notable increase being an over 25% spike from 15,111 MAs in 2023 to 20,721 in 2024.
This single year sudden increase in MAs trumps the previous gradual increase in MAs over the last eight years from 12,107 in 2015 to 14,636 in 2022.
Meanwhile, the number of nurses nationwide had increased from 61,589 in 2015 to 69,145 in 2023 but saw a slight decrease to 69,114 nurses nationwide in 2024.
