Dr Chong Su-Lin (second from left), Monash University Sunway campus  professor of public health Professor Dr Pascale Allotey (centre), and the medical centre's incoming CEO Mr Lau Beng Long (second from right) launching the Healthy Hospital Programme.

When healthcare providers become ill, who takes care of their patients?

Patients look to healthy doctors and nurses to treat them; hence creating a healthy environment for healthcare workers to operate in is paramount to patient care.

With this in mind, the Sunway Healthy Hospital Register was recently launched to monitor the wellbeing of healthcare providers at Sunway Medical Centre.

The effort is led by the Global Public Health (GPH) Research Strength at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Sunway campus, in partnership with the Sunway Medical Centre.

“The idea of a healthy hospital came out of the World Health Organisation’s work on healthy settings,” explained Professor Dr Daniel Reidpath, a professor of population health and a researcher on the project.

A research team made up of eight experienced health professionals from both organisations will collect data from 1,200 staff members of Sunway Medical Centre, making up this novel register.

The register will provide the opportunity to explore social factors such as immigration status, distance from workplace, family makeup; psychological factors; occupational factors such as the nature of occupation, department and position; and on the health and well-being of staff within the private sector.

With this data, researchers would be able to identify, develop and implement health promotion projects at various departments within the hospital to support staff health, and later measure their effectiveness.

“If we follow staff over time, we will find out whether the work place is causing or preventing people from getting sick,” Prof Reidpath said.

Outgoing Sunway Medical Centre Chief Executive Officer Dr Chong Su-Lin said that a study among 550 hospital staff in 2006 showed that four in 10 women and three in 10 men were overweight. Half of the men had less than good HDL (high-density lipoprotein also known as ‘good’ cholesterol).

(From right) Dr Chong Su-Lin, Monash University Sunway campus  professor of public health Professor Dr Pascale Allotey, Dr Daniel Reidpath and Sunway Medical Centre incoming CEO Mr Lau Beng Long view an exhibition held in conjunction with the launch.

“These are terrible numbers. Absolutely ghastly … of the 10 most-eaten fruits, vegetables and nuts were at the bottom of the list,” she said.

Dr Chong said that the study also showed that nurses who worked the night shift had a higher chance of developing high blood pressure, diabetes and abnormal lipids, adding that the combination was “really bad.”

“We see patients every day and tell them they need to eat healthy, but do we do what we say? This is about us making conscious decisions about what we eat and our lifestyles, particularly the amount of exercise we do,” she said.

The program will seek to collect data through a longitudinal study (repeated observations of the same factors within the same group over a period of time) of staff at the medical centre with the objective of monitoring their long-term health and well-being.