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Hong Kong has one of the highest patient-doctor ratios in the developed world, doctors and trainee medics said yesterday.

  Representatives of Hong Kong University and Chinese University medical students, housemen and doctors said hospital staff shortages had put unnecessary pressure on housemen.

 They were speaking after the suicide of houseman Yuen Wing-sing, 26, who had only worked at Princess Margaret Hospital for nine days before jumping to his death.

  Information provided by the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine showed the patients per doctor ratio in Hong Kong was 703. Of the developed countries only Turkey and Britain had worse ratios.

 In the former, a doctor had to take care of 1,111 patients and in the latter 714.

 Former Chinese University medical students said the situation here was worse.

 'There are about 3,000 doctors in the Hospital Authority, who need to take care of 90 per cent of the population. That is a ratio of 2,000 to 1,' the president of the Chinese University Medical Alumni Association, Dr Leung Ka-lau, said.

 A female houseman said she was required to take care of a 60-patient ward during the day and six such wards at night.

 Another doctor, who finished his housemanship this year, said they were not getting sufficient respect from the authority.

 'We are giving a lot. We sometimes work more than 100 hours a week. But in the end, we become the first target of attack.'  Alumni Association vice-chairman Dr Dominic Lee Tak-shing last night criticised the Hospital Authority as making excuses to change employment terms and take advantage of housemen.

 'The Hospital Authority is not being honest. This destroys their reputation.

 Dr Leung said a profession without job security could not attract top people to stay.

 He said medical services was not a profession that could be treated as a commercial product or be decided by market supply and demand.

 The Hospital Authority was urged to increase its transparency and consult the public on how many doctors it really needed.



Patient ratio too high, say doctors