Replies to LegCo questions

LCQ8: Nursing manpower resource

        Following is a question by the Dr Hon Joseph Lee and a written reply by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, in the Legislative Council today (December 8):

 

Question:

 

        At present the nursing manpower resources in Hong Kong are seriously imbalanced.  According to the information provided by the Government, the turnover figure of nursing staff in the Hospital Authority (HA) in the year 2003-04 was 862, representing a major upsurge of about 2.5 times over that of 2002-03. However, the number of nursing graduates in 2003-04 was around 340 only.  In this connection, will the Government inform this Council :

 

(a) whether it knows the up-to-date 'nurse to patient ratios' in the general consultation, various specialist consultation and psychiatric units of public hospitals;

 

(b) of the details of the nursing manpower resource plans of the authorities concerned for the coming five years;

 

(c) of the number of places of subsidised degree course in nursing planned to be offered in the coming five years; and

 

(d) whether concrete measures have been drawn up to reduce the turnover rate of nursing staff in HA?

 

Reply:

 

(a) The overall nursing manpower strength in the Hospital Authority (HA) as at end October 2004 is 19,365 of which 17,348 are general nurses and 1,871 are psychiatric nurses. Individual hospital unit based nursing manpower varies from time to time depending on the patient load and service needs.  A simple ratio of staff to patient is considered not an appropriate indicator of the manpower position given that there are different types of patients, including inpatients, outpatients and other persons cared for in the community, each of whom receives different modes and levels of care. The total patient days for the period between November 2003 and October 2004 for general (including infirmary) and psychiatric (including mentally handicapped) services are 6,001,777 and 1,558,956 respectively.

 

(b) The long term requirement for additional nurses, including the requirement of the public medical sector, private medical sector and welfare sector, is estimated at about 600 a year. The HA has planned to recruit up to 450 nurses each year between 2005-2010 for meeting service needs and replenishment of staff turnover.

 

(c) The Government's policy objective is to upgrade basic nursing education to degree level in order to enhance the quality of health care services. To achieve this, we have requested a progressive increase in the number of nursing degree places and a gradual phasing out of nursing sub-degree places. In the academic year 2004/05, 450 first-year-first-degree places (in full-time-equivalent term) and 138 first year sub-degree places (in full-time equivalent term) in nursing education are provided by the University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded institutions.

 

        To meet the long-term requirement for nurses, we have proposed that the number of first-year-first-degree places in nursing should be further increased starting from 2005/06 academic year. We have conveyed this advice to the UGC in the context of recurrent funding exercise for the UGC-funded institutions in the 2005/06 - 2007/08 triennium. Student number targets (including nursing education) are subject to the approval of the recurrent funding recommendations for the UGC sector by the Finance Committee (FC) of the Legislative Council shortly. It is expected that the planned student places for nursing education in that triennium will be made known to the UGC-funded institutions by the UGC in early 2005.

 

(d) The increase in turnover of nurses in HA in the 2003/04 financial year was due to the implementation of the Government and HA's voluntary early retirement schemes. As these were one-off exercises, this level of staff turnover is not expected to continue. 

 

        The estimated overall supply of new nursing graduates will increase from 340 in 2004 to about 530 in 2005 and around 600 in subsequent years, which will ease the overall nursing manpower pressure.

 

        In addition to the anticipated increase in supply of new nursing graduates in the coming years, the HA will continue to explore ways of alleviating the workload of frontline nursing staff. For example, this year, the HA has retained over 200 undergraduate nursing students on temporary employment to provide workload relief for nursing staff. The temporary employment of undergraduate nursing students will continue as and when necessary. Besides, the HA will also deploy more supporting staff to assist the frontline nurses to carry out simple patient care duties that do not require professional nursing knowledge. Examples of these duties are bed baths, oral health care, giving out bedpans and urinals, and feeding patients.

 

Ends/Wednesday, December 8, 2004

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