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Hong Kong healthcare and hospitals
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Letters | Why Hong Kong should scrap internship rule for foreign-trained doctors working in city

  • The definition of clinical experience in lieu of internship is unclear and unfair
  • Their stay in the public health care institutes during the working period should enable them to attain the required objectives of an internship

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Hong Kong’s public health care sector needs an urgent injection of doctors, and hurdles should not be placed in the way of overseas-trained specialists. Photo: Shutterstock
Letters
All the four proposals for attracting foreign-trained doctors to Hong Kong were voted down in the Medical Council’s meeting on April 3. The outcry from the community at large following that defeat pushed the council to review the matter and decide to vote again in its upcoming meeting on May 8.
In its latest proposal, the Medical Association has suggested that foreign-trained specialists working with limited registration, after passing the licensing examination, be asked to serve a period of 18 months in public hospitals or an equivalent period in other public health care institutes – such as the Department of Health or medical faculties – in return for exemption from a six-month internship.

Yet, due to the different nature of medical duties, this period would be longer for those working in institutes other than public hospitals.

My concerns are twofold. First, the definition of clinical experience in lieu of internship is unclear and unfair. The requirement of an 18-month clinical service is applicable to those who work in government hospitals only. Should the intern choose to work in either the medical faculties of the two universities or the Department of Health, he or she will be assessed by the licensing panel of the Medical Council to see how much of his/her work is calculated as clinical experience.

Such assessment can be controversial and, in view of the nature of work in the two universities or the Department of Health, could possibly not only extend to a period of 18 months but to a longer and unclear period for the interns involved.

Second, based on section 10A of Medical Registration Ordinance, the council defines the purpose of internship for foreign doctors passing the licensing examination as being “to familiarise himself/herself with the local medical system and commonly-found diseases”.
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