Press Releases
SFH on manpower of medical staff (with photos)
Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the
Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a media session after
visiting Tuen Mun Hospital tonight (February 28):
Reporter: (on why there is a serious shortage of medical staff in
public hospitals)
Secretary for Food and Health: The reason is that there is a
significant wastage of frontline medical officers in the department of
medicine last year, resulting in a shortage of medical officers
responsible for the frontline course. In fact, the management has also
met with the frontline staff. As a result, they have decided to
mobilise some of the mid-ranking medical officers to take up some of
the on-call duties with some special arrangement. That is the short
term solution. They are also suggesting some initiatives to reduce
some of the non-clinical work or clerical work of the medical officers
and I think the hospital will be responding positively to that.
Reporter: (on who needs to be blamed for the poor management problem)
Secretary for Food and Health: I do not think anybody should be blamed
for this because thing like this can happen any time. It is important
for the management to respond fast to any type of crisis and any type
of situation like this. I think any unit may face such a situation any
time. As a public hospital, we also need to deal with any crisis any
time. For example, we dealt with that in the time of SARS; we dealt
with that in the time of swine flu and so on.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Monday, February 28, 2011
Issued at HKT 22:42
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