LettersHong Kong medical staff in hospital walkout need to put duty above all

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Medical workers rally outside the Hospital Authority on February 4 to demand that the Hong Kong government close the city’s border with the Chinese mainland to contain the spread of the deadly new coronavirus. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:30am, 5 Feb 2020Updated: 7:30am, 5 Feb 2020

As a group of concerned Hong Kong residents, comprising academics, professionals and fellow health care colleagues, we are deeply worried by the hospital walkout by a group of health care professionals.

To these health care professionals, we say: your concerns about protecting the health environment for fellow Hong Kong residents are well-founded, but taking industrial action against a government in distress is nonetheless alarming and unnecessary for several critically important reasons.

As medical professionals, you have taken the Hippocratic Oath or the Nightingale Pledge. This represents your lifelong commitment and dedication to providing the best care to your patients, irrespective of the causes.

We salute you for being the frontline doctors and nurses and appeal to you to stand by these helpless patients, victims of this dreadful epidemic. Together, we shall overcome!

As part of the government health care employee/civil servant network, you have legal and moral obligations to support the authorities’ desperate appeal to ensure the well-being of patients in your care, and see that their needs are attended to.

When you walk away from your frontline position abruptly, you leave an unfilled position which can add more stress to the hospital management and personnel.

Again, we invoke your medical oaths and urge that you regard the work of helping patients as your most urgent priority.