Surgeon who left Hong Kong transplant patient open for three hours had special contract because of doctor shortage

A Hong Kong surgeon who left a liver transplant patient with an open wound for three hours to attend to another patient, has a special part-time contract because of a severe manpower crunch, the Post has learned.

The rare arrangement is given to Dr Kelvin Ng Kwok-chai because of a serious lack of skilled doctors capable of handling complex operations at Queen Mary Hospital, the only public hospital in the city that performs transplants.

It was understood that Ng, a private doctor employed as a part-time associate professor by the hospital’s partnering school, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), is now out of town and the hospital could not get hold of him.

“None of this would have happened if we had enough manpower and did not require a part-timer,” Professor Lo Chung-mau, chief of HKU’s liver transplant division, said.

“Part-time doctors are not normally on call for emergencies. In this case, Dr Ng was put in a very embarrassing situation, because he also felt responsible for his private patient who was waiting for him with a planned surgery.”