Why do we keep letting our nurses leave?

Malay Mail

20-05-2025

MAY 20 — The New Straits Times editorial on May 16 rightly sounded the alarm: Malaysia is facing a full-blown nursing crisis — not just in numbers, but in experience, morale, and the soul of our healthcare system.
For decades, we've exported our best nurses to countries that see what we refuse to: their worth.
From the UK and Australia to the Gulf and Singapore, Malaysian nurses are snapped up for their skill, discipline, and compassion.
And why not? They're trained in a system that still delivers quality — despite being underpaid, understaffed, and undervalued at home.
But here's the bitter irony: as global demand for Malaysian nurses grows, we are bleeding them out of our own hospitals.
We aren't just short of hands, we are losing institutional memory, clinical judgement, and the quiet leadership that holds our system together.
This is a strategic failure. Every departure takes with it years of experience and the kind of wisdom that no syllabus can teach.
And yet we've done little to stop the exodus, because deep down, we've treated them as replaceable.
Yes, we must train more nurses. But we need to ask: are we training them for service, or for survival?
For our wards, or for someone else's?
If we do not change the conditions they work in, we are simply preparing them to leave faster.
Those who remain are burning out. Twelve-hour shifts. Soaring patient loads. Compulsory overtime. Little support. Even less recognition.
And the cost? Not just early retirements, but a growing number of young nurses leaving the profession entirely. The system is exhausting its people, then acting surprised when they walk away.
An undated file photograph shows healthcare workers at a hospital in Kuala Lumpur. — Bernama pic
We need more than gestures. We need reform.
Yes, raise salaries. But don't stop there. Build real clinical ladders, offer housing and transport support, digitise routine work, and — most critically — put nurses at the table when decisions are made. Not as tokens, but as partners in shaping care.
And let's stop pretending Nurses Day posters, cupcakes, and recycled slogans are signs of respect.
Real appreciation is reflected in policy, pay, protection, and purpose. You can't keep praising their sacrifice while budgeting their well-being to zero.
We must also tackle the pipeline. The current output — just a few hundred graduates a year — is a drop in the ocean.
The government must urgently encourage more nursing schools to open, especially in the private sector.
Provide full scholarships, living allowances, and job guarantees. Not just for those in public colleges, but for any student willing to serve. This is not charity, it's national survival.
Yes, hiring foreign nurses may buy us time. But it won't buy us back what we've already lost. If we can't retain our own, the problem isn't availability. It's values.
And perhaps that's the most uncomfortable truth. This isn't just a crisis of policy. It's a crisis of priority. Of what we choose to reward, and what we allow to decay.
Because if we don't act, decisively and deliberately, we may soon have gleaming hospitals, state-of-the-art equipment, and digital dashboards lighting up empty wards.
Beds are easy to build. But hands that treat? That takes a nation that truly cares.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.