Hong Kong short of 200 nurses as hospitals grapple with deadly flu season
Nursing association accuses government of adding extra beds amid manpower shortage just to lower occupancy rates
Hong Kong’s public hospitals face a chronic shortage of nurses with 200 vacancies at present, the health minister has revealed as the city is caught in the thick of the winter flu season.
On Saturday, Secretary for Food and Health Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee said government hospitals had only been able to recruit 1,800 nurses to fill 2,000 positions.
The new figures were announced after the Association of Hong Kong Nursing Staff, the city’s biggest nurses’ group, ran a full-page newspaper advertisement this week. It urged the government to increase resources to tackle the manpower shortage at overburdened public hospitals.
“As we face a rapidly ageing society and the peak of the winter flu season, we understand that nurses are under a lot of pressure and [hospitals] are understaffed ... We hire nurses every year, but of course there will be some [who leave their jobs]. At present, we have been able to fill 80 per cent of our vacancies,” Chan said on the sidelines of a nursing conference.
She said the Hospital Authority had increased allowances for medical professionals willing to work extra hours or on a part-time basis. This was one of the measures to boost resources during the winter flu season.