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Ella Lee

The Hospital Authority is planning to spend HK$100 million to stop a brain drain of doctors and nurses.
It aims to create more senior posts and hire more trainees using extra money in this month's budget.
Nursing turnover is at 5 per cent this year, a three-year high. 
The turnover of doctors is also expected to reach 5 per cent as a stream of professionals in public hospitals move to better-paid positions in the private sector.
The authority's annual budget will increase from HK$34 billion to more than HK$36 billion in the coming financial year. 
To stop the outflow of staff, it intends to put more nurses in senior positions, hire 1,500 graduate nurses and 300 trainee doctors.
The extra money will also be spent on buying new drugs and replacing old medical equipment.
Booming private hospitals have become an especially powerful draw for public nurses in paediatrics. 
Some 100 paediatric nurses, about 8 per cent of the total, have quit the public system so far this year. 
They are in high demand at private hospitals, which are receiving a growing number of pregnant women from the mainland.
The turnover of nurses from surgical units is about 5 per cent and rising. Some private hospitals are offering higher salaries and bonuses to lure them from the public sector.
The nursing shortage has forced some public hospitals to delay making more beds available and initiate other cutbacks. Queen Mary Hospital has cut operating theatre hours by 10 per cent. 
Public hospitals are especially short of veteran nurses. Most advanced practice nurses (APN) have eight to 12 years' work experience.
But registered nurses can be promoted to APN status after five years' of working in a speciality and with relevant training. 
Most departments now have just one APN for every six registered or enrolled nurses - a ratio considered too low. Only the neo-natal intensive care units have a minimum ratio of one APN to four. 
The authority wants to make that ratio the standard for departments by creating more APN posts. 'We are reviewing the manpower situation and want to roll out a one-to-four, or at least one-to-five ratio on other skilled areas such as intensive care units and operating theatres,' a person familiar with the matter said. 
The legislator representing the health-care sector, Joseph Lee Kok-long, said the authority had cut more than 200 APN posts in past years and it was time to replace them. 
Lee also called on the authority to raise salaries for nurses with less than two years' experience because their pay level lagged far behind the  private sector. 
'The authority should stop opening new services in the coming year to avoid stretching the nursing manpower too much,' Lee said. 
The authority also plans to create more senior posts for doctors. The South China Morning Post reported earlier that doctors specialising in internal medicine are angry about their poor career prospects. 
Some of the lowest-ranking doctors have to wait an average 16 years for promotion. A Hospital Authority panel formed by top physicians has urged the government to act at once. 
Dr Loletta So Kit-ying, president of the Public Doctors' Association, said the union would press the authority to promote physicians with 10 years' experience unless their performance was very poor. 'Almost all acute public hospitals have a 10 to 15 per cent vacancy rate for internal medicine,' So said. 
'Those who stay here are doing 1.5 jobs and they want to leave because of the increasing workloads. 
'Some are so frustrated with the poor morale and heavy workload that they quit even before they can secure a new job.'
Unhealthy situation
The turnover of nursing staff in public hospitals has reached a three-year high and is currently at a rate of: 5%



Hospital chiefs get HK$100m to plug brain drain