The biggest public doctors union yesterday urged the Hospital Authority to promote all the medics who had acquired specialist qualifications to senior posts to stop a brain drain.
But the authority said doing so would stretch its finances as more than 700 doctors had the qualifications. But it pledged to shorten the promotion path for them to less than six years.
The Public Doctors' Association threatened industrial action if the authority failed to address a manpower shortage with a package of improvement measures by March 18.
At present, 777 doctors from different specialities have attained specialist qualifications but remain at the junior medical officer or resident doctor grade - the lowest in the system. It takes a doctor at least six years after graduation to take a specialist position, such as surgeon, physician or paediatrician.
Hospital Authority chief executive Dr Leung Pak-yin yesterday said that a wholesale promotion would be financially impractical. Instead, the authority would consider introducing a policy that ensured doctors promotion to senior medical officer or associate consultant position five or six years after receiving the specialist qualification.
Leung hopes to enforce the policy in the next two to three years.
