By 2030, Malaysia will face a 60% shortage of nurses.
Colleges and universities in the country can’t keep up with the demand to fill vacant nursing jobs, as many have closed down throughout the years. According to the national newspaper The Star, nine Health Ministry nursing training institutions closed in 2019 alone.
Ng Ching See, Director of Nursing Services at the Subang Jaya Medical Centre, told Hospital Management Asia that “the recruitment of Malaysian nurses is highly competitive, not just between local healthcare providers, but also between providers in the region.”
Tiffany Khoo, the founder and CEO of the Malaysian healthcare app WeAssist, agrees.
“I spent some time working in the human resource department of a hospital; I noticed that it was hard to hire nurses,” says Khoo. “It was common for patients to be turned away from hospitals due to the hospital being understaffed, despite having a lot of empty beds.”
Khoo knew this was becoming a problem that wouldn’t be easy to solve.
However, a solution came to her one day. When discussing the problem with her family, Khoo’s brother suggested creating an app to help ease the hiring process for nursing jobs and support healthcare professionals.
Khoo (left) found that professionals in the healthcare industry, especially nurses, feel like they had little control over their own career paths, often leading them to leave the industry or move abroad for a better work-life balance. Source: Tiffany Khoo
Understanding the struggles the nursing industry faces
One of the biggest struggles about working as a nurse is that once your foot is in the door of the industry, it’s tricky to get out. As a nurse, you’ll be honing a niche set of skills, making changing careers a little more difficult than for others.
However, that doesn’t stop them from leaving the country to pursue a better career abroad, contributing to the existing nursing jobs shortages.
“We had to think of ways to encourage healthcare professionals to stay in Malaysia and figure out the other reasons that are making them quit,” says Khoo.
After conducting 200 Google surveys, she found that healthcare professionals feel like they lack or have no autonomy over their nursing jobs — simply put, they have no control over their careers.
Let’s take marketing professionals, for example.
While marketing can be stressful, marketers have control over their career direction. From social media managers to copywriters or even performance marketing associates, there are many ways for them to branch out once they start feeling job fatigue.
Those in nursing jobs do not have this luxury. Male nurses, in particular, have it a little worse.
“It’s tough for healthcare professionals to switch careers and stay within the industry,” says Khoo. “They often feel like they need to leave the industry.”
WeAssist is one of the eight winners that will be representing Malaysia on the global stage of WSA. Source: Tiffany Khoo
Making the overall job hunt and career growth for those in nursing better
This is where Khoo’s WeAssist comes in.
WeAssist, through its core products, “Locum Apps”, “Health Expert”, and “Web Assist”, aims to redefine healthcare information and accessibility through technology.
Locum Apps connects hospitals and clinics in Malaysia to licensed medical staff, such as doctors and nurses, who can temporarily take up jobs to help fulfil duties according to healthcare facilities’ demands.
Partnering with hospitals and clinics, Khoo and her team have successfully streamlined jobs the facilities posted online by doing skill set credentialling.
“We know that every community in Malaysia needs healthcare, no matter your background, and that wasn’t something we could unlock unless we had a centralised system,” says Khoo on the creation of WeAssist.
When nurses look for temporary nursing jobs through Locum Apps, they only see jobs they are eligible for, but on a bigger scale than what they usually see on standard job websites.
That’s not all; nurses looking to broaden their skills or move to a different healthcare setting can do it through Locum Apps, all while still keeping in touch with their profession.
One example was a nurse working in hospital wards who used Locum Apps and found part-time work in a confinement centre.
“It was an unfamiliar place for her, and a new healthcare setting with different skill sets was needed, but she realised this was where her passion lay,” shares Khoo. “Now, she has taken up a full-time and higher position despite having previous doubts about her career change.”
This is precisely what WeAssist and Locums Apps say it does, offering an element of control that keeps nurses within their profession, giving them the freedom to choose, stopping them from leaving, and helping them receive additional income.
Siti Shafinaz, a local nurse, agrees: “The choice of working hours and place is clearly stated, along with the details of the tasks that need to be done. I no longer feel rushed or have to think about what I need to do. I don’t need to calculate my work time; I just need to tap on the app to state when my working hours start and end. Hourly salary calculations are also directly calculated without fraud or related problems.”
Since its launch in 2020, WeAssist and Locum Apps have paid over US$3.3 million (RM15 million) to healthcare staff in Malaysia and facilitated over 600,000 hours of work through its platform.
On top of that, Locum Apps has 11 medical partners, including some of the biggest hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, like Sunway Medical Centre, Gleneagles, and Prince Court Medical Centre.
When Khoo first founded WeAssist in 2020, she faced prejudice as a young female CEO, especially when visiting hospitals to get an audience to talk about the app. Today, she has learnt to overcome it and is working to diversify the industry. Source: Tiffany Khoo
‘I realised that building something from nothing is special, and I wanted to do the same’
With her current work helping out the nursing industry, it might come as a surprise that Khoo herself has never worked as a nurse.
In fact, prior to kickstarting WeAssist, Khoo was a law graduate from the London School of Economics and Political Science and had returned to Malaysia to begin her career as a legal counsel and solicitor.
Her link to the healthcare industry? Her cardiothoracic surgeon father, who, at 47, decided to challenge himself by becoming an entrepreneur and opening his own hospital.
It was a reasonably high-risk move. Going from a traditional and stable career as a doctor to an entrepreneur was a giant leap that inspired Khoo to do the same.
“Life changes quite dramatically, and I had a chance to witness what my dad did up close,” says Khoo. “I realised that building something from nothing is special, and I wanted to do the same.”
Khoo is open to offering aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to shadow her for a week to learn and experience what it’s like to become a founder and CEO of a company. Source: Tiffany Khoo
Advice from an established entrepreneur to those looking to start a business
“Don’t fall in love with the glamour of starting a business,” Khoo says.
It goes without saying that starting a business is a challenging journey. There are many obstacles to face and overcome, and failure can be very disheartening and demotivating at times.
Accepting it as a natural part of the journey is not easy either. Starting your own business can also affect your confidence in the product and even yourself, especially when your ideas get rejected.
Khoo’s advice on getting over that? Ask yourself these important questions:
- How do I want my life to be?
- Do I see myself waking up in the morning and having the first thought be about my company?
- Do I see myself running a team?
If you know that starting a business is part of your long-term goal, Khoo advises that shadowing an entrepreneur for a week or two is the best way to put yourself in the shoes of a business owner.
“I believe the world needs more entrepreneurs, and I think it’s important for people to understand what it takes to become one,” she says.
That said, Khoo is open to taking in aspiring entrepreneurs to shadow her and learn the ways of a company founder and CEO.
