Manpower not funding is the true crisis in health care
- The flu season has again placed long-standing public hospital staff shortages under the spotlight
- But the majority of doctors continue to resist importing more qualified foreign medical staff or offering better terms to retain existing foreign staff
Overworked medical staff and overcrowded wards at public hospitals during this peak flu season have once again placed long-standing staff shortages under the spotlight.
It’s fashionable to blame the government and the Hospital Authority for failing the public. They surely are responsible, but there is plenty of blame to go around besides the obvious culprits.
About 100 public sector doctors staged a protest at the weekend to voice their grievances. It followed a demonstration by frustrated nurses a week ago.
The protesting doctors, not unreasonably, have blamed the authorities for failing to address manpower shortages. Morale may be hitting rock bottom. The doctors and nurses say their work is not being valued, and that their labour is being exploited. This contributes to an exodus of staff into the private sector.
Hospital wards packed like Chinese restaurants, doctors complain
The authorities, in turn, are rounded on for failing to retain experienced staff. It’s a vicious cycle, especially when the majority of public and private doctors continue to resist, tooth and nail, importing more qualified foreign medical staff or offering better terms to retain existing foreign staff on short-term contracts.
Ours is not a financial resource crisis, but a manpower one. Half a billion dollars in emergency funding has been handed to all public hospitals since last month to deal with the flu surge. Frontline staff get a temporary 10 per cent rise in allowance until the end of April. But, however much you pay them, you can never match the private sector.
Meanwhile, the manpower problem will only get worse. Last year, a record-high number of doctors left public hospitals for the private sector with a turnover rate of 5.7 per cent. The projected increase in new doctors being trained at the city’s two major medical schools will only fill the gap left by the high turnover, but not raising patient demands.
Between 8,000 and 9,000 new beds will become available under two 10-year plans going into the next decade: more patients, not enough doctors and nurses. By 2025, it’s projected we will be short of 755 doctors and 1,383 nurses. A review by the Food and Health Bureau claims the manpower problem will not be resolved until 2030 – bureaucratese for saying it will never be resolved?
Our public doctors need to face the truth. Unless they support opening their jobs to foreign medical staff and resist the cartel-like resistance of private doctors’ groups, they will always be short-charged.
