January 18, 2021

Opened in January 1985, St Joseph’s Home is Singapore’s first palliative care service. The then hospice had merely 16 beds for inpatient care but has since grown and taken care of the elderly for over 35 years. In this time, medical staff and care workers have offered their help and services to ensure the well-being of the elderly residents in the home. However, is this care extended from co-worker to co-worker?

‘The ethics of care’, or ‘care ethics’, is a moral theory which suggests that care emerges from the practice of maintaining social relationships by meeting the needs of oneself and the other. Most evident in spaces of care-giving, such as nursing homes, care ethics gives us an insight into the moral dynamics of multicultural interactions between care-workers and their care-receivers.

Associate Professor Shirlena Huang and Professor Brenda Yeoh (both NUS Department of Geography) focus on the methods employed by foreign and local care workers to “do” care while navigating the parameters of multi-culturalism. In their article, ‘Multicultural encounters in Singapore’s nursing homes: a care ethics approach’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2020), elderly nursing homes in Singapore are studied to understand how the formal practice of intercultural care extends to informal settings for care-workers.

Through conducting interviews with care-workers, it is revealed that almost all participants assumed general stereotypes of other nationalities at the outset of their employment. However, a fair number of foreign workers have been able to gain better understanding of other nationalities by regularly interacting with their foreign co-workers. While there are instances of mere co-existence and tolerance, rather than empathy and harmony, in the living spaces of foreign workers from different nationalities, the greatest challenge lies in the asymmetric power dynamic of foreign and local workers. There is a large disparity between locals and foreigners as foreign staff members often do not have the same opportunities as local workers.

While there are challenges in successfully relating the professional practice of care ethics in interpersonal multicultural interactions, such instances reveal the need for greater intercultural respect and learning. The openness to resolve differences and engage effectively with various nationalities is required to lessen the chasm between locals and foreigners to eventually treat minorities as equals.

Read the full article here.