The Hospital Authority (HA) has announced that the applications of four more non-local doctors to practice, with limited registration, have been accepted.
The applications were approved by the Medical Council of Hong Kong (MCHK), which also renewed the same permission for five non-local doctors. The HA submitted the nine applications on December 7.
The nine doctors will be deployed to serve in the anaesthesia, family medicine, intensive care and internal medicine departments in public hospitals.
The HA spokesman said that currently there are 10 non-local doctors working in public hospitals under limited registration to relieve manpower shortages in the departments, and to alleviate the workload pressures on front line doctors.
The HA spokesman said that it will continue to exhaust every effort to attract fully registered local doctors and retain public doctors. Meanwhile, the Authority said it would like to express its appreciation to all doctors for their commitment and contribution to serving the public under manpower constraints.
Temporary licences but full-time jobs
Doctors with limited registration can be employed by the HA as medical practitioners for the purposes of research work or for the clinical practice of medicine or special health care services, as specified by the Director of Health. They are also allowed to work at the University of Hong Kong or The Chinese University of Hong Kong for the purposes of teaching, research, or performing hospital work, in the Faculty of Medicine. They cannot work in private practice and must re-apply to renew the registration from time to time.
Doctors with limited registration who have passed the MCHK’s Licensing Examination and completed a prescribed period of internship at the HA, usually a year, can obtain a full registration.
Any person who has passed the Licensing Examination can apply for exemption from a specialty of internship training if he/she has comparable specialist experience. Alternatively, the internship period may be shortened from one year to six months.
