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Patsy Moy

12 graduates have been lured to Singapore since last year

A dozen physiotherapy graduates whose training cost  taxpayers $4 million have been recruited by Singapore since last year, according to the head of rehabilitation sciences at Polytechnic University.

Chair professor Christina Hui-Chan Wan-ying  said five graduates this year and seven last year took jobs in Singapore.

Professor Hui-Chan said Hong Kong already had one of the world's smallest  pools  of physiotherapists, compared with the total population.

With just over 1,800 physiotherapists serving a population of 6.8 million people, its rate is about a third that in countries including Canada, the US and New Zealand.

Professor Hui-Chan, who heads the only  physiotherapy training course in Hong Kong, said  the shortage of physiotherapists would get worse if they continued to be recruited overseas.

'Graduates are not necessarily more willing to work overseas. There could be many factors at play, such as the employment terms and conditions as compared with those here,' she said.

'The challenge of working in a new culture and other personal reasons or preferences could be other factors.'

She  blamed the government for underestimating the need for physiotherapists, with new spaces for physiotherapy training being  slashed from an intake of about 150 a year between 1998 and 2001, to 80 last year, to only 60 this year.

Legislator Kwok Ka-ki,  who is also the deputy chairman of Legco's health services panel, estimated the cost of training  a physiotherapist was about $500,000 over the three-year course - about one-sixth the cost of training  a doctor.

Dr Kwok said about two-thirds of the tuition costs were subsidised by the government and the remainder  was paid by students. The 12 graduates therefore cost taxpayers about $4 million in subsidies for their training.

The legislator also agreed that the demand for physiotherapists was growing due to the ageing population. He said it was disappointing the graduates were not  serving  the local community.

'Physiotherapists play a major role in rehabilitation not only among ailing elderly people but also for younger people who have been injured in accidents or suffer from other diseases that cause pain or immobility,' he said.

'So it would be important for the government to have an accurate projection for the demand when it decides the intake of students.'

Dr Kwok said the career prospects for physiotherapists remained uncertain in view of the financial woes of the Hospital Authority.

At the end of last year,  there were 1,858 registered physiotherapists in Hong Kong, with only 668 or 30 per cent  employed by the Hospital Authority.

The authority hired 16 physiotherapists last year.

The monthly salary range for physiotherapists working in public hospitals and clinics is $16,165 to $29,100, compared with $17,145 to $30,430 for registered nurses.

The monthly salary for junior public doctors is between $33,355 and $54,255.



City feels strain of physiotherapy brain drain