Hansard Explorer

Ms He Ting Ru asked the Coordinating Minister for Social Policies and Minister for Health (a) what is the Ministry's position on clinical psychologists prescribing medication; (b) what regulations and approvals will be required before prescribing rights can be conferred; and (c) if such rights are granted, what safeguards will be required to ensure patient safety.

The Senior Minister of State for Health (Mr Tan Kiat How) (for the Coordinating Minister for Social Policies and Minister for Health): Sir, with the rising prevalence of mental health conditions, clinical psychologists play an increasingly important role, particularly in community and preventive care, where they provide direct patient care such as assessment, formulation and intervention.

Recognising their evolving role, we are working towards the registration of five subdisciplines of psychologists, including clinical psychologists, to strengthen professional standards and accountability. As clinical psychologists provide psychological interventions as part of the broader care team, if medication is required, psychologists can refer patients to psychiatrists and family doctors.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) currently has no plans to extend prescribing rights to clinical psychologists. The extension of prescribing rights to registered professionals requires a clear clinical and service need, with appropriate training and qualifications, and subject to institutional governance and oversight.

Mr Speaker: Ms He.

Ms He Ting Ru: I thank the Senior Minister of State for the clarification. The reason why I filed the Parliamentary Question is because I believe there was a programme, specifically a module under the ASPIRE Programme from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), which appears to be at least covering some prescription curricula. And this is very firmly within the clinical psychologist realm. To be honest, I have been approached by some psychologists and also practitioners and even psychiatrists, who have been a bit concerned about whether or not that this means that MOH has been working with NTU or is moving in that direction. So, thank you for clarifying that this is not something that MOH is looking at, at the moment.

But a related supplementary question is whether there can be further clarification or maybe even engagement with the educational provider, to make it clear that this is not something that we are currently working towards. As the Senior Minister of State also pointed out in his response earlier, our regulatory pathway for psychologists is still being worked on and there are a lot of very complex issues being discussed; you need proper training for psycho-pharmacological prescription expertise.

Mr Tan Kiat How: I thank the Member for the supplementary question and the context in which her question is posed. For the benefit of the rest of the Members, when she said "ASPIRE", it stands for Applied Specialist Psychology Integrated Residency Education, and it is provided by the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine as part of its work-study stackable learning model that allows learners to progress through different tiers of training.

Whilst some training programmes may cover prescribing, prescribing rights are determined by patient and service needs, as I outlined earlier in my reply. Just to assure the community and the professionals and those who are interested in this area, should a service need arise for a clinical psychologist to prescribe, MOH will need to establish the national level framework and work with the relevant institutes of higher learning to ensure that learning programmes meet the defined competency standards for clinical psychologists to prescribe safely and effectively.

So, let me just reiterate, whilst some training programmes may cover prescribing, prescribing rights are determined by patient and service needs. And at this point time, MOH does not see such a need.