The Medical Council reprimanded a beauty salon's medical consultant for failing to take adequate steps to prevent the promotion of her practice in an advertisement.
The doctors' code of conduct restricts promotion of their practices, but a lawyer at the disciplinary inquiry said there was a 'proliferation of such advertisements'.
Mark Chan, legal officer for the Secretary for Justice, alleged that Dr Fiona Wong Ka-yan, a doctor working at The Skin Clinic, 'promoted, or acquiesced in the promotion of, or failed to take adequate steps to prevent the promotion of her practice' through an advertisement published in a magazine on June 7, 2006.
Wong's name and title were not mentioned in the advert, but, according to Professor Felice Lieh Mak, chairwoman of the Medical Council, it included a coupon offering a 'substantial discount'. It reduced the price of a laser treatment from HK$2,800 to $388, and the advert said that doctors performing the services promoted would give better results. Lieh Mak said that it served to attract patients to Wong's practice at the salon in Causeway Bay.
Chan said Wong's business card bore her title, the salon's logo and working hours, thereby establishing a professional relationship between them.
He argued that Wong, being in the business, would know about the 'proliferation of such advertisements'. However, he failed to establish that Wong 'promoted, or acquiesced in the promotion' of the clinic.