Specialty Nursing comprises several specialised units with nurses providing care management to patients with specific health conditions and needs. Such conditions include patients with wounds, pain conditions or palliative care needs. The nurses work closely with a multi-disciplinary team including physicians, and allied health professionals (dieticians, pharmacists, therapists, social workers) to enhance patient outcomes and experiences. The services are available for patients across care settings through inpatient nurse consults, and outpatient review.
Services Include:
Working closely with the multi-disciplinary team members, the Bariatric Service nurses coordinate bariatric care planning and management between the care team and patients; and support, motivate and empower patients to achieve sustainable weight loss for better health and wellbeing.
The nurses adopt a holistic care approach to address patients’ needs in physical and psychosocial health before and after they undergo bariatric surgeries. Eligible patients will receive intensive counselling and education sessions at different phases of their bariatric journey. This helps them in decision-making, to reinforce optimal health seeking behaviours, and introduce new diet behaviours, habits and positive lifestyles.
To support long-term sustainable weight loss by the patients, the Bariatric Service nurses organise and plan regular support group activities among the patients to create platforms for peer sharing and mutual encouragement.
Working closely with the colorectal surgical specialists, the Colorectal Service nurses provide nursing assessment, monitoring and management to patients with colorectal conditions. They provide counselling and psychological support to patients before and after they undergo colorectal surgeries. With the nursing expertise in stoma care, they review patients in the inpatient wards and outpatient clinics, support, and empower them and their caregivers to effectively self-manage stomas. The nurses also support and educate patients with bowel issues, such as constipation and faecal incontinence, with the aim to improve their symptoms and quality of life.
The Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Service nurses provide nursing assessment, monitoring and management for patients with liver, pancreas and/or bile duct issues before and after their surgical interventions. In the outpatient nurse consult clinic, they provide pre-operative counselling, symptom management education and psychological support to patients, their families and caregivers. For patients admitted for surgeries, the nurses conduct post-operative reviews, perform discharge planning and coordination, and provide patient and caregiver education and training to ensure proper care transition and continuity to home and the community.
Early diagnosis of HIV enables early access to care and treatment for patients. This helps to control HIV transmission in society.
The HIV Care & Counselling service nurses act as the resource persons on HIV screening, management and care to patients, families and other healthcare providers. Working closely with the inpatient care teams, the nurses conduct daily screening of patients who have opted in for HIV screening, and provide them with information on HIV. The nurses also provide counselling and psychological support for patients diagnosed with HIV, to equip them with insights on living with HIV as well as the prevention of transmissions. They coordinate the care, administer and support HIV treatment for patients in close collaboration with the multi-disciplinary care providers within the hospital.
Working closely with the medical and surgical specialists, the nurses of Osteoporosis Liaison service provide education and counselling to patients and families on osteoporosis and its related management measures. They serve as the resource persons and provide patient and caregiver training on the administration of medications for osteoporosis treatment. They review patients admitted for fragility fractures in the wards and refer them to the Endocrine Bone clinic whenever appropriate.
CGH Pain Service nurses provide daily inpatient and outpatient consults to patients with acute and/or chronic pain due to causes such as traumatic injuries, surgeries and low back pain secondary to spinal stenosis.
The role of Pain Service nurses includes the assessment of patients with different pain conditions; recommendation and initiation of various pain control techniques; monitoring of efficacy, side effects and complications of treatments, therapies and procedures instituted for pain control; and education and empowerment of patients to self-manage pain.
The Palliative Care nurses provide inpatient consult services to patients with palliative care needs. The nurses work closely with community partners to ensure smooth transition of care for our patients and their caregivers from hospital to home and the community.
The different aspects of care provided includes:
The Smoking Cessation Service for inpatients and outpatients at CGH started in 2009. Patients admitted are assessed on their tobacco use status by the care teams. Patients using tobacco can request to be referred for smoking cessation counselling with a nurse counsellor, who is certified as a Quit Smoking Counsellor by the Health Promotion Board (HPB).
The Nurse Counsellors perform patient assessment to determine the causative factors for their tobacco use, and introduce and tailor appropriate methods to motivate patients to quit smoking. They support patients by educating them on measures to cope with and manage withdrawal symptoms, as well as offer pharmacotherapy to help patients in their quit-smoking process. Understanding that patients wanting to quit smoking may require longer term support, they introduce and link them to a Quit Smoking Counsellor in CGH outpatient clinics or to HPB Quitline Counsellors.
Working in close collaboration with the surgical specialists and the allied health professionals, the Spine Service nurses provide daily review of inpatients with spinal conditions requiring surgical interventions and/or those requiring spinal orthosis.
The role of the nurses includes the provision of counselling to patients and their families before and after their spinal surgeries; the management, care and education of patients and their families on pain management, wound care, care of neck/back and orthosis. The nurses also coordinate care among the care team members, and perform discharge planning for patients after their surgeries to facilitate transition and continuity of care back home and in the community.
The CGH Wound Care Team provides nurse-led wound care services in collaboration with the multi-disciplinary team to ensure holistic care management of patients with wounds across inpatient, outpatient and community care settings.
The Wound Care Service encompasses comprehensive wound assessment and evaluation, recommendation of topical wound therapies, and recommendation of pressure injury prevention and management strategies. Wound Care nurses also perform complex wound dressings and/or specialised procedures for patients, such as conservative sharp wound debridement, compression bandaging, negative pressure wound therapy and transcutaneous oxygen monitoring.
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