When Margaret Lee was appointed Deputy CEO of Alexandra Hospital on July 1, 2024 – the first female nurse to be appointed to a C-suite position since 2015 – it was one more unexpected twist in the 48-year-old’s life.

After all, nursing was not even on her radar as a young girl growing up in a Kang Kar kampung. Nursing was her ninth choice out of 12 at Nanyang Polytechnic.

Little did she know then that from faring dismally for her ‘O’ levels (“That was a big wake-up call”), and tumbling into a profession she did not plan, she would one day earn a Master of Health Science (Management) from The University of Sydney, pick up leadership skills from Harvard Business School, and be honoured with the 2021 President’s Award for Nurses.

Ask Margaret how her remarkable career panned out and she has a simple reply: “It can only be God.”

Carefree in Kang Kar

Until the age of six, Margaret’s playmates were chickens and guppies.

Carefree days were spent climbing trees, catching the family chickens and jumping into streams to catch slippery guppies. (“Even when we moved to an HDB estate, I would remove the drain covers and jump in to look for guppies.”)

Margaret (front, centre) with her secondary school classmates in CHIJ St Joseph’s Convent.

Born a “cradle Catholic” in Holy Innocents Lane, where CHIJ Punggol Church was the neighbourhood landmark, meant that Margaret’s parents, relatives, friends and even classmates were mostly Catholic.

“We had prayers every morning in CHIJ St Joseph’s Convent and our motto of being ‘steadfast in duty’ reflected the discipline my parents quietly role modelled. There was no skiving or skipping school for frivolous reasons. Yet their love showed whenever I was under the weather and my mum would walk to my school at recess to bring me home-cooked porridge.

“Of course I didn’t appreciate all this as a child, but later on when I went out to work and met diverse people, I began to appreciate my faith origins and the values embedded early in my life.”

“Like that, then how?”

Margaret’s first major milestone was not a success, but a failure.

Her less-than-stellar ‘O’ level results dashed her childhood dreams of pursuing graphic design.

“I didn’t have the humility to re-take my ‘O’ levels. But I didn’t do so badly that I could not go on to tertiary education. So I made the choice to take up the nursing diploma course offered,” she says, adding: “Actually, I had a nagging suspicion that nursing was what I was meant for. But I wondered if I had what it took to be service oriented because at that point I had never been responsible for anyone in my life.”

With course mates from the Advanced Diploma in Nursing (Critical Care) in 1999. Longtime friends Janet (back, right) and Doreen (front, centre) were Margaret’s batch mates from her Diploma in Nursing days in 1993. Today, they still work together at Alexandra Hospital.

Nursing school at the then Outram campus exposed the 17-year-old to clinical skills such as taking blood and inserting tubes. And soon, hospital postings opened her eyes to the raw reality of nursing, where dealing with vomit, blood and excrement were everyday occurrences.

“Nursing trained me to take a scientific view of these things. When a patient passes motion, as nurses we are more interested to see what the stool looks like because it may be signs of a condition. So we can eat our dinner and talk about this kind of thing at the same time,” she says with good humour. “When I got married at 24 and was an ICU nurse, my husband would hear my colleagues and me ‘talking shop’ and protest, ‘We’re eating here and you all are talking sh*t … that’s not normal!’”

In these early years, she gained not just clinical experience, but how to “take captive her thoughts” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

“After our nursing shift, we were encouraged to reflect. So on long bus rides home, in between naps, I would think, ‘This went well today. How do I replicate this positive experience?’ Or if something went wrong, to be honest about how I might have contributed to the situation and whether I could have done things differently.

“That safe space of self-reflection allowed me to grow as a person and as a professional. I learnt to have a growth mindset.

“Looking back, I think it’s a gift that God allowed me to experience failure early in my life in a safe zone and with a loving family of faith. My parents never scolded me for my poor ‘O’ level results. They just said, ‘Like that, then how?’ And supported me in my choice of going to nursing school.”

The empathy, work ethic and optimism which are now her professional trademarks “did not come naturally”, she tells Salt&Light.

“Nursing taught me to be introspective, and together with my faith and the assurance that I have a home to return to and people who love me, all shaped the course of my life,” says Margaret, whose husband and three children aged 15, 18 and 20, attend church together.

“The way I started, being extremely ordinary, helps me not to lose touch with what matters to people on the ground.” 

God loves him more

It was in the high-stakes, high-stress ICU department, caring for liver transplant patients, that Margaret found her professional niche.

“As nurses, we tend to have a relationship with transplant patients because you see them from the time they are on the transplant waiting list and having liver dialysis,” she says. “I also saw these patients after their surgery. So the entire continuum allowed me to know, not just the patient, but also their family members. That was very gratifying. At the same time, when the outcome was not good and you saw how their loved ones were affected, you would really feel it.”

A rare, quiet night shift during Margaret’s Medical-Surgical ICU days in 2000.

She recalls a particular patient – a humble, dialect-speaking fishmonger – who was on the transplant list for an extended period. With his gentle and compliant nature, he was a favourite among the nurses. When a new liver was found for him, the entire team cheered for him and his wife, who had faithfully accompanied him to every appointment.

But after the transplant, he exhibited signs of rejection to the new organ and quickly went downhill. He passed on in a matter of days.

“The scene of the wife in the ICU room, collapsing on the ground wailing, is something that I’ll always remember,” says Margaret soberly.

How does she reconcile this with a good God? “I believe God loves him more, and wants to relieve him of his suffering and pain.

“In healthcare, everything is evidence-based and scientific. But overlaying that is the softer aspect of nurture,” says Margaret. “Early on, I had to figure out how to balance that.”

She also found that being “steadfast in duty” meant meeting all kinds of challenges with mettle and good humour –  including the challenges that came with being a diminutive 1.45m.

“All ICU patients are plugged into monitors which are normal height for others, but quite high for me. So I would make sure I came on shift early to get a step stool for the 8-hour shift. At times the step stool was not available, so I had to be creative by bringing a long ruler with me. After a while it was very evident which patients’ beds I looked after because you’d see a dent in the button from the ruler I used to poke at it!”

One 12-hour shift saw Margaret administering continuous blood infusions throughout the night. “I didn’t go for a break at all because the drip pole was wall mounted and too high for me to reach, so I had to keep jumping on the step stool to bring it down to hang. That was one night shift I will always remember. But it was strangely fulfilling, because my mindset was: If this is what the patient needs, let’s just do whatever it takes to get it done until I hand over to my colleague.”

Does she ever get discouraged?

“I’ve certainly had moments when I felt disillusioned,” she reflects. “But in the end, we love because God first loved us. And I need to apply my faith especially where I spend most of my time – the workplace.

“Of course it’s not easy to love difficult people,” says Margaret who says it is not unheard of for nurses to be punched, spat on, have their butts touched and their breasts pinched. She trains the nurses to do their research and read risky situations to avoid potential abuse.

“Sometimes we say, this one, ah, F-O-N (full of nonsense)! But ultimately I believe in respect and trying to understand the patient or family’s frustration, or a physical condition like dementia, that might trigger them.”

Light in the darkness

When Covid-19 swept across the world, it became a test of fire for many sectors, but nowhere more so than in healthcare.

In Singapore, in the midst of dire pandemic conditions in the hospitals, there were also reports of healthcare workers being harassed and shunned by cab drivers and hotels in the early days of panic and paranoia.

Then Chief Nurse at Alexandra Hospital, Margaret stepped up the care of her nurses.

Knowing that the hospital settings were well managed by nurse leaders, she took herself out to the dormitories where her nurses had been posted – the F1 pit, Big Box – to give them moral support.

“The public was very supportive, sending us daily gifts of muffins, air purifiers, masks and vouchers. At the same time, the nurses needed leadership presence to come alongside so that they knew they were not alone or forgotten,” says Margaret.

Addressing the first Alexandra Hospital town hall of 2025 as Deputy CEO.

“It also made sense procedurally, because when there was an influx of patients or new processes being tested, having the leaders on the ground allowed us to be more responsive to any issues being surfaced.”

In these unprecedented circumstances, Margaret’s propensity to chafe at routines in favour of thinking out of the box turned out to be just what was needed, as she solutionised on the go.

A system she started that allowed nurses, instead of doctors, to take the lead in caring for certain groups of patients, including those in rehab and those who were almost ready to be discharged, was timely and efficient.

The initiative earned her the 2021 President’s Award for Nurses – the highest accolade in Singapore’s nursing profession.

The girl who had dreamt of becoming an artist but became a nurse saw how God knew her better than she knew herself.

Despite her good-natured self-effacement – “I can be very opinionated and critical, kao peh (complain) until it upsets my husband” – her genuine care for people is evident.

“Time and again, through thick and thin, and across the years, whether we were fighting Covid-19 or planning for the redeveloped hospital, Margaret did not just steady, but also uplifted our team,” said Alexandra Hospital’s CEO, Associate Professor Jason Phua in a Straits Times interview when Margaret was appointed Deputy CEO. He added that the role needs someone who is not only able to visualise a radical, new future for healthcare, but rally the team towards achieving them.

The Cher family: Margaret with her husband and three children, aged 15, 18 and 20, on a family holiday in December 2024. The family attends the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Her appointment comes at a time when nurses make up 43% of Alexandra Hospital’s headcount, and when plans are afoot to grow the hospital from 300 beds to a 1,300-bed integrated hospital.

It is a role that took some convincing for Margaret to take up.

“I just wanted a simpler life – have holidays with my family, take long walks with my husband, read, jo boh (do nothing) a bit. But when this cross came along, it was hard to deny.

“I had been struck by a homily in church about the parable of the talents. (Matthew 25:14-30) If God has gifted us certain talents, the parable tells that we shouldn’t be burying the talents but growing them. So when I heard the homily, it struck me because it was God asking me: You have these gifts. Why aren’t you maximising it for the good of humanity?

“If I really honour what I say, that I’m able to live out my faith through my work, then this cross is a signal to me that I’m asked to deliver more. The reason I’d deny it is for self-centred reasons: I don’t want to work so hard. So I have a choice, because God will never force our hand. Then I needed to be honest with myself: If I truly believe that God will never give us more than we can handle, then I have to walk by faith.

“We always have a choice of how to respond – positively or negatively. In healthcare, there are moments of futility. This can come at every level, from a patient’s viewpoint in terms of prognosis, or from a leadership point when you look at the challenging health landscape and confront all the factors that are out of our control.

“But with faith, you know there is always light at the end of the tunnel. My faith grounds me in hope.”

RELATED STORIES:

“I love them just as I love you”: How God broke the heart of a nurse who started street outreach to people with HIV and AIDS

Palliative care nurses: Bedside angels to the dying and their families

On the frontlines and far from home: Two foreign nurses draw comfort from giving comfort