Replies to LegCo questions
LCQ11: Nursing manpower of Hospital Authority
Following is a question by the Dr Hon Joseph Lee Kok-long and a written reply by
the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, in the Legislative Council
today (June 13):
Question:
It has been learnt that the Hospital Authority (HA) anticipates that healthcare
staff born in the post-war baby boom are close to their retirement age and a
wave of retirement will emerge in HA. In this connection, will the Government
inform this Council if it knows:
(a) the number of nurses reaching retirement age in the coming 10 years as
anticipated by HA, and list in the table in Annex 1 the respective numbers of
nurses of different hospital clusters retiring each year;
(b) the numbers of nurses who will retire in each of the coming 10 years as
anticipated by HA, and the respective percentages of such numbers in the total
numbers of nurses, and list the breakdown in the table in Annex 2;
(c) whether there will be enough experienced nurses by that time to fill those
vacancies arising from retirement of the nurses concerned, as anticipated by HA;
if so, the details; if not, how the authorities will tackle the problem arising
from retirement of experienced nurses; and
(d) whether HA will focus on the retirement of experienced nurses one after
another and introduce new measures to retain experienced nurses to work for HA;
if it will, the details; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
With an ageing population and advancement in medical technology, there is an
increasing demand for healthcare services in the community, and the manpower
requirement for healthcare personnel grows commensurately. We have set up the
Steering Committee on Strategic Review on Healthcare Manpower Planning and
Professional Development, chaired by the Secretary for Food and Health, to
conduct a strategic review on healthcare manpower planning and professional
development in Hong Kong. The Steering Committee is tasked to formulate
recommendations on how to cope with anticipated demand for healthcare manpower,
strengthen professional training and facilitate professional development having
regard to the findings of the strategic review, with a view to ensuring the
healthy and sustainable development of our healthcare system. On the training
for healthcare professions, the Government has obtained the funding approval by
the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council and will, for the three years
starting from 2012-13, allocate an addition of $200 million to increase the
number of first-year first-degree places in medicine by 100 to 420 per year,
nursing by 40 to 630 and allied health professional by 146. Extra places will
also be offered by self-financing post-secondary institutions to train more
nurses.
In the past few years, the Hospital Authority (HA) has implemented a series of
measures to address manpower issues. As for nursing manpower, HA recruited some
1 730 additional nurses in 2011-2012 to meet the service demand.
My reply to the various parts of the question is as follows:
(a) Currently, there are a total of about 21 000 nurses in HA. In general, the
retirement age for nurses is 60. As anticipated by HA, the number of nurses who
will reach their retirement age in the coming ten years is set out in Annex 3.
(b) As anticipated by HA, the number of nurses in various specialties who will
reach their retirement age in the coming ten years is set out in Annex 4.
At present, HA is unable to project the actual number of nurses from 2012-13
onwards and is thus not able to provide the percentage of the total number of
nurses who will retire the coming 10 years.
(c) In recent years, HA has recruited about 300 experienced nurses from the
market each year. HA also endeavoured to promote the continuing professional
development of nurses in order to effectively replenish the loss of professional
skills arising from the turnover of nurses. A series of structured training
courses are provided by HA for all ranks of nurses. To meet the nursing needs of
most of the specialties, the number of post-registration certificate courses on
different specialties for Registered Nurses had increased by more than two-fold
to 25 during the period from 2007-08 to 2011-12. Over the same period, the
number of nurses trained had also increased significantly from some 400 to about
1 100.
Moreover, in the light of its overall priorities in service development, HA has
subsidised nurses to receive overseas training for attainment and enhancement of
professional knowledge and skills. HA has launched a corporate scholarship
programme since 2009-10 to sponsor Advance Practice Nurses and senior nurses to
attend a four-week overseas training. In 2009-10 and 2010-11, over 100 nurses
received sponsorships to attend overseas training. To support the career
development of enrolled nurses, HA has enhanced the training sponsorship and
offered full pay salary for nurses undertaking conversion courses to attain
Registered Nurse qualification starting from 2011-12.
(d) To retain experienced nurses, HA has introduced a number of initiatives as
set out below:
(i) Enhancement of promotion opportunities of nurses
To further enhance the promotion opportunities of nurses, HA created a number of
additional promotion posts including over 50 Nurse Consultants and 150 Advance
Practice Nurse posts in 2011-12 on top of those for normal replacements and
planned new services. The number of posts of Senior Nursing Officer/Department
Operations Manager for normal replacement and planned new services was 40
whereas the number of promotion posts of Nursing Officer/Ward Manager/Advance
Practice Nurse was 438.
(ii) Improvement of working arrangements
HA has taken measures to relieve nurses from non-clinical work, including
enhancement of clerical support and topping up the delivery of medical
consumables and supplies. HA also endeavoured to modernise the frequently used
equipment to alleviate nurses' workload. For instance, a replacement plan was
formulated in 2007 with the target of replacing 9 000 standard hospitals beds
with electrically-operated beds in five years to reduce manual handling during
patient ambulation. Besides, HA has also increased the rate of allowance for the
continuous night scheme to provide better incentives for nurses to undertake
continuous night shift duties as well as reducing frequent night duties of
nurses to not more than once in every seven days as far as practicable. HA will
review the impact of its various initiatives on nurses' workload, and suitably
re-prioritise and adjust the pace of initiatives having regard to the actual
manpower availability.
(iii) Strengthening of workforce to address workload demand
To provide the necessary manpower for maintaining existing services and
supporting service enhancement initiatives, HA plans to recruit about 2 000
nurses in 2012-13. HA will also continue to train up nurses. The training places
for Registered Nurse and Enrolled Nurse students will be about 300 and 100
respectively for this year.
Ends/Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Issued at HKT 13:47
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Annex 1
Annex 2
Annex 3
Annex 4