Singapore: Healthcare is about ‘staying’ with the suffering, hospital staff told

The nurse was praying in the Singapore hospital chapel when a rather demanding and ungrateful patient that she had been caring for also came in. This was during the Covid pandemic, and although social distancing was the norm, the patient approached the nurse, grabbed her hand, and, to her amazement, said, “Thank you for caring for me. Thank you for bearing with me.”

That poignant moment changed the nurse’s attitude towards healthcare completely and made her realise that “healthcare was not just about being cured, but it was about ‘staying’. Staying at the bedside. Staying with the suffering. Staying at the foot of the cross.”

Franciscan Friar William Lee shared this moving incident during a Mass to mark the 65th anniversary of Mount Alvernia Hospital founded by nuns from the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM). The hospital is the only Catholic hospital in Singapore.

Referring to the day’s Gospel reading in which the mother of James and John asked Jesus to give them positions of worldly greatness, he noted that for the Catholic hospital, “greatness” was not about status but about service.

“Greatness here looks like this. Cleaning a wound gently, listening patiently to a frightened patient, sitting quietly with a dying person, and offering a smile, even if it's at 3 a.m.,” he told some 90 hospital staff and visitors gathered in the chapel on March 4.

“As we give thanks for 65 years, may we renew the founding vision of the FMDM Sisters: simplicity, humility, compassion and joyful service. And may this hospital continue to be not only a place of medical excellence, but a place where the Gospel is lived quietly, bedside by bedside,” said Friar Lee.

The Mass also saw the hospital’s leadership team lighting candles given to them, symbolising how Christ’s light accompanies the hospital’s mission in its care for the sick and the suffering.

The celebration continued after Mass with the elderly FMDM nuns, some in wheelchairs, cutting the 65th anniversary cake and taking part in a singing session together with hospital staff.

 Mount Alvernia Hospital is the only not-for-profit general acute tertiary care private hospital in Singapore. With 340 beds, it is supported by over 370 on-campus specialist doctors and 1,480 accredited doctors. Dedicated clinical pastoral care forms part of the hospital’s holistic care for patients and their families regardless of background or belief.

The hospital traces its roots to 1949 when three young FMDM nuns, who were professionally trained in healthcare, arrived in Singapore from Surrey, England.  They came at the request of the British colonial government who were short on medical facilities and professionals, and facing a post-war population that was exceedingly undernourished and suffering from tropical diseases.

The Sisters were posted to a local hospital and quickly set about caring for tuberculosis patients. They also cared for lepers at another institution and established a nursing school in 1950.

By the early 1950s, tuberculosis in Singapore had been greatly reduced and the Sisters felt it was time to meet the needs of the people in a different way. Their vision: a well-planned, professionally managed hospital where every patient would be offered comfort, solace and the best possible medical care.

Pooling their salaries as government nurses, they started a building fund and began canvassing for donations, often going door-to-door.

By October 1956, the Sisters managed to raise enough to acquire a seven-acre parcel of land along a hilly stretch of Thomson Road. Construction began in 1957, and in 1961, the 60-bed Mount Alvernia Hospital received its first patients.

The hospital was entirely staffed by nuns who played the roles of nurse, midwife, physiotherapist, laboratory technician, pharmacy dispenser, radiographer, cook and even ambulance driver. In 1987 the Sisters handed over the running of the hospital to a lay management team.

Over the years, many distinguished visitors have visited the hospital. They included Mother Teresa and Singapore's First Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.