Pledge of staff boost at Hong Kong’s stretched public hospitals
- Hospital Authority says it will hire more than 2,000 nurses and 500 doctors in the coming year
- It also promises action to allay growing concerns about bureaucracy
More than 2,000 nurses and 500 doctors will be recruited in the coming year under an ambitious plan to ease the burden on workers at Hong Kong’s public hospitals.
That was the promise from the Hospital Authority, which also pledged to cut red tape to spare clinical staff being locked in meetings with management during the winter peak season.
The authority is battling mounting discontent by overworked doctors and nurses, some of whom have laid the blame for ward woes on the influx of migrants under the controversial system that allows up to 150 people to move to the city from mainland China every day.
Lawmakers cautiously welcomed the measures, but said the authority also needed to boost pay to keep staff.
A paper jointly prepared by the authority and the Food and Health Bureau, to be presented at the Legislative Council health services panel meeting on Tuesday, stated that the authority “targets to recruit 520 doctors and 2,270 nurses in 2019-20”.