Five nursing leaders receive President's award

They get highest accolade for the profession for sustained outstanding contributions

- Judith Tan

Ms Elena Mohamed Ayob’s father wanted her, the eldest of his five children, to become a teacher – a noble profession, particularly for the older people of his generation.

Instead, she studied to be a nurse at Nanyang Polytechnic.

On July 19, Ms Elena, 45, received the President’s Award for Nurses – the highest accolade for the profession in Singapore.

She is one of five nursing leaders who received the award from President Tharman Shanmugaratnam in a ceremony at The Star Gallery.

Ms Elena, a deputy director of nursing at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) where she has been working for the last 26 years, said she was attracted to the profession by the starched white cap nurses used to wear in the 1960s and 1970s.

To her, the cap stood for nurses’ compassion, professionalism and passion to care for others – traits they also inspire in others.

She was disappointed when the caps “were done away with in 1989 after the hospitals were restructured”, she said.

As it turned out, her father, who has since died, was not disappointed with her decision to become a nurse.

“To be fair, my father did not outwardly or violently object to my choice of career. (In fact), as time went on, he did become very proud of my achievements,” Ms Elena told The Straits Times.

In 2021, she assumed the responsibility of overseeing the nursing staff at SGH – a portfolio often viewed as one of the most challenging within the nursing division.

For one thing, the annual attrition rate of nurses across Singapore was a key concern at the time – at SGH, it was 8.1 per cent.

Working with her team and the Ministry of Health (MOH), Ms Elena managed to reduce the attrition by over 30 per cent to 6.7 per cent in 2023.