“I don’t advocate transferring them to a hospice. This is their house. Old people want to die in their own house,” said executive director Low Mui Lang.

However, at the Sunlove Home along Buangkok View, more than 90 per cent of its elderly residents are usually sent to a hospital when complications occur. This is because the home’s focus is on psychiatry and it lacks resources for palliative care, said nursing director Charles Lingham.

Dying a “good death’’ came under the spotlight recently when Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan noted that 55 per cent of people who died here died in hospitals. He wants nursing homes to play a role in easing the pain of the dying, so hospitals can focus on treatment instead of palliative care.

Nursing homes feel that a trained palliative care professional would be a boon, given that many of their doctors – often volunteer general practitioners –drop in only a few times a week at most.

Of the 59 nursing homes here, 29 are charity-run.

Six homes will be picked for a pilot scheme that will involve doctors and nurses from Tan Tock Seng Hospital training their staff in palliative care.

Nursing homes say they already do some form of end-of-life planning. Staff will speak to a resident’s family members and doctors on what should be done when the resident’s condition takes a turn for the worse.

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