Replies to LegCo questions
LCQ8: Nursing manpower of Hospital Authority
Following is a question by the Dr Hon Leung Ka-lau and a written reply by the
Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, in the Legislative Council today
(July 9):
Question:
It is learnt that currently there is a serious shortage of nursing manpower in
public healthcare services. As a result, quite a number of new and existing
services have been affected. Regarding nursing manpower and training of nurses,
will the Government inform this Council if it knows:
(1) the number of new healthcare services that the Hospital Authority (HA) plans
to launch in each of the coming five years, and set out the nursing manpower
required for each service;
(2) whether HA has projected the numbers of vacancies for enrolled nurses and
registered nurses in various specialist services in each of the coming five
years; if HA has projected, set out a tabulated breakdown of such vacancies by
rank and number of service years required; if not, the reasons for that;
(3) why HA plans to close down the schools for training enrolled nurses under
the United Christian Hospital, Prince of Wales Hospital and Pamela Youde
Nethersole Eastern Hospital this year; the number of nurse training places and
the amount of expenditure reduced as a result of such a plan;
(4) in each of the coming five years, (i) the respective numbers of places of
Bachelor of Nursing programmes and Higher Diploma in Nursing programmes to be
offered by various publicly-funded tertiary institutions, (ii) the respective
numbers of places of enrolled nurses and registered nurses training programmes
to be offered by the nursing schools under public hospitals, and (iii) the
respective numbers of nursing graduates that will be recruited by public general
and psychiatric services; and
(5) the respective current unit costs for public hospitals to train enrolled
nurses and registered nurses?
Reply:
President,
The Hospital Authority (HA) is responsible for managing the public hospital
system in Hong Kong and providing quality and affordable public health services
to the public.
"The Strategic Plan 2012-2017" is an overarching document for service and
development planning of HA, outlining the objectives and strategies to be
pursued by HA in the coming five years. It also provides directions and
guidelines for its annual planning so that clinical and executive staff may
align their programme initiatives in the process of service planning.
My reply to the various parts of the question is as follows:
(1) and (2) Starting from 2012-13, "the Strategic Plan 2012-2017" guides the
development of the HA's annual plans for the following five years. The aim is to
steer HA towards achieving its common vision and mission.
Every year, HA follows the annual planning process in formulating the work plan
for the next year. During the process, it will review the overall supply and
demand of resources and manpower, and allocate funds and manpower to hospitals
in various clusters in accordance with the annual work plan.
HA will seek annual funding through the Government's Resource Allocation
Exercise to meet the needs of daily operation and new services of the hospitals.
In formulating the resource allocation (including nursing service and manpower
distribution) to various clusters, HA will consider the following factors:
(1) the resources needed to sustain the operation of existing services of
various clusters;
(2) the new services and priority initiatives that have been approved in the
annual planning process;
(3) the resources required to address the needs of other specific pressure
areas/service gaps;
(4) replacement for manpower wastage of hospitals in various clusters in the
previous year; and
(5) nursing manpower requirement estimated according to a workload assessment
model.
The targeted number of nurses to be recruited each year by HA is set having
regard to the turnover rate and the manpower required for providing new
services. On the operational front, HA will flexibly deploy nursing staff to
provide existing and new medical services. Therefore, HA has not maintained
statistics on the vacancy of nursing staff in respect of each medical service
programme and specialty.
In general, HA has strengthened the recruitment of nurses in recent years to
relieve the pressure on nursing manpower. The increase in the number of nurses
is mainly for the provision of new medical services. The net increase in the
number of nurses each year is listed in the following table:
Year
Number of nurses
Net increase
2009-10
19 866
--
2010-11
20 102
236
2011-12
20 901
799
2012-13
21 816
915
2013-14
22 759
943
Total 2 893
HA estimated that there was a shortfall of about 600 nurses in 2013-14. HA has
implemented various measures to attract and retain staff, including
strengthening recruitment, enhancing promotion prospects and supporting career
development of enrolled nurses, with a view to relieving the manpower shortage
of nurses. HA will continue to monitor the manpower situation and make
appropriate arrangements in manpower planning to cope with the service demand.
(3) To ensure a sufficient provision of nurses to meet service demand, HA
re-opened the four Enrolled Nurse (General) training schools at the Pamela Youde
Nethersole Eastern Hospital, the Grantham Hospital, the United Christian
Hospital and the Prince of Wales Hospital in 2008. The number of nursing
students trained for HA by these schools in the last five years is set out as
follows:
Year
Number of nursing students
2009-10
320
2010-11
320
2011-12
100
2012-13
100
2013-14
100
In addition, the Social Welfare Department (SWD) has collaborated with the HA to
organise a two-year Enrolled Nurse (General) Training Programme for the welfare
sector since 2006 to alleviate the shortage of nurses in the welfare sector. The
number of nursing students admitted in the last five years is set out as
follows:
Year
Number of nursing students for welfare sector
2009-10
220
2010-11
190
2011-12
160
2012-13
260
2013-14
260
Since starting from 2014-15, SWD no longer designates HA as the collaborating
partner on organising enrolled nurse training programmes for welfare sector, and
having considered the cost-effectiveness to maintain the three enrolled nurse
training schools for training 100 nurses each year, and in view of the
redevelopment works of the United Christian Hospital and the planned
redevelopment project of the Prince of Wales Hospital (Phase 2), the two
hospitals will cease to admit new students for enrolled nurse training with
effect from 2014-15. Since the accreditation given to the Enrolled Nurse
Training Programme of Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital by the Nursing
Council of Hong Kong was valid up to 2012-13, the hospital's nursing school has
ceased to enroll students in 2013-14 and will close in October 2014.
Nevertheless, the number of places for the enrolled nurse training programme of
HA will remain unchanged in 2014-15, maintaining at 100 annually. The Enrolled
Nurse Training Programme of the HA will continue to be conducted in the training
school of the Grantham Hospital. Since the number of places for the HA's
enrolled nurse programmes remains at 100 in 2014-15, there is no reduction in
programme expenditure.
(4) Nursing is a discipline which is subject to the Government's specific
manpower requirements. At the beginning of each triennium of the planning of
student number targets, the University Grants Committee (UGC) will inform the
institutions offering the manpower-planned programmes of the respective student
number targets advised by the Administration. For the 2012-13 to 2014-15
triennium, the first-year-first-degree and senior year intake places for nursing
programme increased from 590 and 100 respectively in the 2011-12 academic year
to 630 and 125 respectively in the 2014-15 academic year. UGC-funded
institutions do not have plan to offer UGC-funded Higher Diploma in Nursing
programmes in 2014-15 academic year. As regards the next triennium (i.e. 2015-16
to 2017-18 academic years), planning is under way and the student number targets
of the manpower-planned programmes (including nursing programmes) will be
determined in due course.
HA's nursing schools plan to continue to enroll 300 Registered Nurse students
and 100 Enrolled Nurses students in 2014-15. HA will assess the demand for
nursing manpower on a yearly basis in order to confirm the number of nursing
students to be enrolled each year before making further projection on the
respective number of nursing graduates to be recruited by general and
psychiatric units of hospitals each year.
(5) The cost of providing training for nursing students by the HA's nursing
schools includes staff expenditure and other operating costs, and the training
of nurses is mainly provided through nursing schools and on-the-job training.
Since the training of nurses forms part and parcel of the HA overall service
provision, the requested cost breakdown is not available. Moreover, HA does not
calculate costs with students as units. Hence, figures about the unit cost per
Registered/Enrolled Nurse student are not available.
Ends/Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Issued at HKT 15:33
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