NGOs want parity with hospitals for instructing students

Voluntary organisations should be paid for offering clinical training to university students studying rehabilitation sciences, experts say.

All 125 would-be physiotherapists and occupational therapists at the Polytechnic University (PolyU) have to take six blocks of clinical placement at public hospitals.

Eleven senior physiotherapists and six senior occupational therapists are hired by the Hospital Authority (HA) as clinical educators to teach on a teacher-to-student ratio of 1:6 at public hospitals. This accounts for 102 students.

But the remaining 23 physiotherapy and occupational therapy students are left for non-government organisations (NGOs), non-HA hospitals and few HA hospitals which receive no subsidy for training.

Christina Hui Chan Wan-ying, the head and chair professor of the university's department of rehabilitation sciences, said: 'Every year, we have to ask NGOs one by one to give us free clinical training for the remaining students.' The HA clinical educators are employed on a full-time basis to work 1,684 hours. However, they only give 1,040 training hours to the university's students.

After a year of discussion between the HA and the university, it has been agreed that the clinical educators will be paid at $549 per teaching hour instead of the higher full-time pay.