CNA profiled Yvonne Yap, Deputy Director of Nursing at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) and one of the youngest recipients of the President’s Award for Nurses 2025. Her career is a masterclass in empathetic care: from personally bathing a reluctant stroke patient to coordinating complex discharge plans and establishing an internal nursing ethics committee. Her story is a reminder that nursing is not “just tasks”—it’s the daily practice of restoring dignity when people are at their most vulnerable.
What the article says (in brief)
- Empathy at the core: Early in her career, Yap chose to bathe and groom a distressed elderly stroke patient herself—using the simple act of care to rebuild trust and self-worth. She later visited him regularly and rallied support to improve his living conditions.
- Dignity first: She reframes “basic” care (bathing, wound care, grooming) as deeply human work, because patients must surrender privacy and control. The nurse’s job, she argues, is to return dignity—not just administer procedures.
- Formative experiences: As a child, Yap saw nurse relatives restore dignity to her late father in a hospital, an act that sparked her vocation. Volunteering with her mother deepened her commitment to service.
- Leading for better care: Now a senior leader overseeing ~2,000 nurses, Yap:
- Set up a nursing ethics committee to help frontline staff navigate real-world dilemmas (e.g., truth-telling, end-of-life decisions).
- Redesigned rosters (fewer consecutive nights; 7.30am starts) to support nurses with families.
- Streamlined workflows so nurses can spend more time seeing and understanding patients, not just moving through checklists.
- Clinical impact through nursing: Her team once averted a planned amputation by strict wound care, diet, and off-loading—showcasing how nursing competence can change outcomes.
Plaudits for Ms Yvonne Yap
Brava, Ms Yap. Your leadership is a living argument that nursing is both a science and an ethic. You’ve shown that:
- Hands-on care is not “menial”—it is meaningful, requiring skill, patience, and emotional intelligence.
- Ethical clarity belongs at the bedside, not just in policy documents.
- Workforce care is patient care—when nurses are supported, patients receive safer, more humane treatment.
Your work dignifies the profession and the people it serves. Singapore is fortunate to have nurse leaders who build systems around compassion, not despite it.
Why nursing is essential—and dignified
- Nurses hold the line on dignity. A bath, a dressing change, a gentle explanation—these are not “chores”. They are moments of recognition that say: you matter.
- Nurses are the care integrators. They coordinate across disciplines, anticipate complications, educate families, and notice the small signals that avert big problems.
- Nurses carry ethical weight. They’re the ones bedside when truth, fear, culture, and prognosis collide—often mediating difficult conversations with grace.
Calling nursing “just cleaning backsides” misses the point: nursing is the daily, disciplined protection of personhood.
If healthcare is judged by how it treats people in their most fragile moments, then nursing is the profession that sets the standard. Yvonne Yap’s story isn’t simply inspirational—it’s instructive. Invest in nurses. Trust their judgment. Build schedules and systems that respect their lives. Patients—and the entire health system—will stand taller for it.
