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Written by: Commentary Editing Room
2021-06-30 06:45
Last update date: 2021-06-30 06:45
On Monday (28th), the first Chinese medicine hospital in Hong Kong held a preparatory ceremony for its opening. It is expected to be completed in 2025 and will be put into service in the second quarter of the same year.
When the Chinese Medicine Hospital is fully operational, it will provide 400 beds. Based on this calculation, the scale is equivalent to the Wong Tai Sin Hospital. It employs 200 full-time and part-time Chinese medicine practitioners. It is certainly an ideal channel for recruiting Chinese medicine practitioners. Wei Bingjiang said that the Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine can absorb students trained by local universities, but it does not rule out that individual specialties need to bring in overseas professionals.
However, both the government and the industry expect that the supply of Chinese medicine practitioners will exceed demand in the future. When both parties promote research, teaching and medical treatment of Chinese medicine, they must plan for the industry as soon as possible, so as not to waste local talents and improve the health of the people.
The government issued the "Review Report on Medical Manpower Planning and Professional Development Strategies" in 2017, which pointed out that the number of Chinese medicine practitioners in 2016 exceeded the demand by 716, and it is estimated that there will be 354 more in 2020.
On top of this, the number of students in the clinical part of the local Chinese medicine practice examination has continued to increase in recent years.
According to figures from the Hong Kong Chinese Medicine Council, at the end of 2019, there were more than 7,500 registered Chinese medicine practitioners in Hong Kong. From 2012 to 2019, the total number of candidates more than doubled to 948, and the number of passing candidates increased by 70% to 346.
This means that the oversupply situation will continue for some time.
Zhang Weilin pointed out that after the full-scale service of the Chinese Medicine Hospital, it will have 400 beds and can handle more than 310,000 consultations each year.
Which specialties need to introduce talents?
In view of the shortage of Western medicine in Hong Kong in recent years, the shortage of doctors in public hospitals has lengthened the treatment time and quality of treatment for patients, and it is not a bad thing that the supply of Chinese medicine practitioners is abundant.
There are opinions in the industry that the threshold should be raised and the number of examination items should be increased to limit the number of Chinese medicine practitioners in the profession and to ensure the standard of service.
The examination criteria are updated regularly to ensure that the selection of industry elites is reasonable and reasonable. However, the industry should not use examinations to limit the number of practitioners to "guarantee their jobs."
Statistics from the Chinese Medicine Council of Hong Kong indicate that the number of passers has indeed risen, but the pass rate has gradually decreased, reflecting that the content of the examination has reached a certain level of screening.
On the contrary, we must make good use of this group of professionals to improve people's health and scientific research development.
The role of Chinese medicine hospitals in absorbing talents is very important.
The principal said that all three local universities can provide enough manpower for Chinese medicine hospitals, which is to send reassurance pills to the industry and students, and to provide Chinese medicine practitioners with another way out of private practice or working in clinics and teaching and research centers.
However, he also said that the need to introduce specialists in individual specialties cannot be ruled out.
The exchange of talents can help improve knowledge and technology. Hong Kong should not isolate foreign Chinese medicine practitioners. However, under the premise of oversupply of manpower, operators should explain as soon as possible which positions and sub-disciplines have a greater shortage of Chinese medicine practitioners, so that the industry can respond and evaluate whether it is reasonable. Students and the industry can be encouraged to specialize in the field of "thirsty market" and enhance their competitiveness.
The Chinese Medicine Hospital will officially start construction on June 30 and is expected to be completed in 2025.
(Photo by Zhang Haowei)
Public outpatient clinics help increase the demand for Chinese medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine hospitals are only part of absorbing the manpower demand of Chinese medicine. At the overall social level, the demand for Chinese medicine has much room for expansion.
Although Chinese medicine clinics are everywhere, the public is not as active as they might think.
According to a survey conducted by the Census and Statistics Department, between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, the number of people who had consulted traditional Chinese medicine accounted for 14.6% of the total number of consultations, and the ratio and the number of people were lower than in 2014. One reason is that Chinese medicine has not yet been included Public grassroots service system.
The current government-provided Chinese medicine outpatient clinics are in cooperation with universities and NGOs, and have a fund-raising fund, and the fee is 120 yuan per visit, which is more expensive than the general outpatient clinics commonly known as "street disease". Only CSSA and people over 75 years old Recipients of the High Elderly Living Allowance are exempted from fees.
The most direct consequence is that ordinary patients at the grassroots level either purchase over-the-counter medicines or stay in the Western medicine system to save medical expenses.
Even if Chinese medicine practitioners are included in the voucher, the beneficiaries are the elderly.
Therefore, the government should expand the amount of subsidy, and in the long run, Chinese medicine clinics should be included in the public system to attract more people to seek consultations with Chinese medicine practitioners, increase the demand for Chinese medicine and doctors, and reduce the pressure on western medicine clinics by the way.
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