MOTHER NURSE

Nam Say, who is 10 years younger. He was a playful child who disliked school, so Prof Lim, who attended the afternoon school session, accompanied him to kindergarten every morning for several years and sat in class to keep an eye on him.

“Some nights, I would fan him to sleep and get so tired that I’d doze off. He’d wake up and complain that I’d stopped!” she chuckles.

Her selfless nature extended beyond the home. As a teenager, Prof Lim joined her school’s Red Cross society and volunteered for two years at SGH. Every fortnight, she read to and kept patients company.

It seems natural that her nurturing personality drew her to nursing. She became a nurse at 17 after her O levels, to supplement her family’s income. Prof Lim quickly fell in love with her job. She was inspired by the dedication of her supervisors, whom the student nurses called “sisters”. “They were our role models. When we saw that they came to work half an hour before their shifts, we came in earlier too,” she says.

She eventually made the leap into management, taking on concurrent directorial positions – nursing director at NHCS in 2000, then at SGH in 2004, and finally group director of nursing at SingHealth. The soft touch that worked with her patients she now used to win over her staff.

“The first time I went on an overseas work trip with her, she bought chicken and vegetables from the supermarket and started cooking for all of us,” recalls Dr Tracy Carol Ayre, 46, who succeeded Prof Lim as group director of nursing at SingHealth and director of nursing at SGH. “She’s like a mother to her nurses.”

One of Prof Lim’s priorities when she took the helm at SGH was to foster a more supportive working culture. She noticed how the nurses were reluctant to report lapses in service, such as if a patient fell, as they feared being punished.