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Hong Kong healthcare and hospitals
Hong KongHealth & Environment

Hong Kong authorities to bolster doctor training, help find heart donor for 3-month-old baby

Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau says bureau will check on adequacy of training at medical schools, contacted mainland to help save child with heart failure

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Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei, where an intern doctor’s misreading of an X-ray scan led to the wrongful placement of a feeding tube in a 61-year-old patient in June. Photo: Dickson Lee
Edith Lin
Hong Kong authorities will step up training for intern doctors and check with the city’s two medical schools whether they are providing sufficient practice for students, the health minister has said after two blunders in hospitals involving trainees.
Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau also said on Sunday that his bureau had reached out to mainland Chinese authorities to find a suitable organ donor to help save the life of a three-month-old baby girl, Whitney, who is in critical condition due to an enlarged heart chamber.

Lo noted the repeated mishaps, which involved intern doctors’ erroneous readings of X-ray scans leading to the wrongful placement of feeding tubes, could no longer be viewed as individual cases but reflected a “systemic problem”.

“We hope to strengthen training, especially on [the procedures for delivering] feeding tubes. This will be done urgently within a short period of time this year. We hope to improve service quality and ensure the public will not be that worried about this medical procedure,” Lo said.

He added that public hospitals should provide more support to intern doctors by encouraging them to seek help from senior staff.

Lo also said the problem might be related to training of doctors by the medical schools of the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong as graduates from those institutions were allowed to receive provisional licences.

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