Asia Continence Nursing Congress 2021 Post-Event Highlights

SFCS is very proud to have hosted the inaugural Asia Continence Nursing Congress on 22 – 24 October 2021. The program kicked off with a Pre-Congress Workshop about managing incontinence in the long-term care setting followed by the Main Congress, which consisted of 2-days of exciting and thought-stimulating educational talks by world-renowned leaders of nursing and continence care. While the congress was held virtually, we saw an overwhelming response, with over 1,000 participants from various parts of Asia, including China, Korea, Philippines and Malaysia attending.

For this event, we were honoured to have Dr. Koh Poh Koon, Senior Minister of State for Ministry of Health and Ministry of Manpower, as our Guest-of-Honour. Among many notable speakers, we had Chief Nursing Officer of Ministry of Health, Ms. Paulin Koh, Mr. Yong Keng Kwang, Group Chief Nurse of National Healthcare Group, A/Prof Edward Poon, Chief Nurse of St. Luke’s ElderCare as well as world-renowned experts in continence care, Professor Keryln Carville and Ms Joy Sears share their knowledge with the attendees.

We kicked off the Main Congress with an inspiring session where leaders of nursing in Singapore shared their views on how nurses can make a difference to patients in continence care. You can catch the full presentations here.

Ms Paulin Koh, Chief Nursing Officer of Ministry of Health gave a detailed overview of the various types of continence, how these affect lives and how various types of assessment approaches can address these conditions. Nurses can create a comfortable environment for patients to talk about their problems in a supportive manner. She highlighted that nurses need to play a role in providing, leading and coordinating care that is compassionate, evidence-based and person-centred.

Moving into the future, nurses can be further developed to specialise in continence care. She went into detail about how other countries like the UK, Australia, Hong Kong and the Netherlands have advanced the role of nurses and achieved nurse-led continence care.

This was followed by talks from Dr Hoi Shu Yin, Chief Nurse at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Ms. Tina Tng, Nurse Clinician from Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s Community Health Team and A/Professor Edward Poon on the transformation of nurses’ roles in continence, ageing and step-down care.

The next session was an exciting roundtable discussion on “Delivering Continence Care Across Asia” with continence nurses from 7 countries sharing and discussing challenges faced in delivering continence care in their countries. In total, there were 27 lectures given by doctors, nurses and physiotherapists on various issues in bladder and bowel incontinence as well as pelvic floor support at the congress. Each session was accompanied by lively exchanges during the Q&A section.

The congress ended with an announcement for plans to organise the next Asia Continence Nursing Congress in 2022 in Singapore. We want to thank all our speakers, volunteers and sponsors who made ACNC 2021 such a great success. Please keep a look out for the announcement of the next ACNC in 2022 and we hope to get your continued support for all our future SFCS programs.

ACNC provided many great learning sessions. The videos will be on our website for a year. You can also explore other event highlights on our website. We hope to see you in 2023!