Should doctors who provide the first level of medical care for patients be required to go back to school - or at least hospital - for retraining?
This is the debate now rumbling in the medical profession as the government prepares to publish Hong Kong's first directory of primary-care doctors.
The Food and Health Bureau will put the directory on the internet in early April, aiming to provide easy-to-read information about doctors' qualifications and experience so that patients can choose practitioners according to their needs.
Primary-care doctors are those who provide services to patients as the first point of contact, before specialist care or hospitals. They are mostly general practitioners but also include some paediatricians, family medicine specialists and those dealing with the elderly.
Unlike specialists, they are not required to have any continuing medical education after qualifying. But once the list is published they will have to do so if they want to stay on it.
The vice-president of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine and a specialist in family medicine, Dr Donald Li Kwok-tung, believes that most of the 2,000-odd primary-care doctors in the city will want to be listed in the directory.
Li, also a member of a government-appointed task force designing the directory, said it should be made accessible to all doctors during the setting-up stage. 'But by evolution, the requirements for doctors to enter and stay on the list should be tightened. We should not make it too difficult in the initial stage because doctors in the past did not have much training opportunities, we should not punish them.'