Public hospitals want to hire overseas surgeons - without requiring them to pass Hong Kong examinations - in the first exercise of its kind to relieve a severe manpower shortage.
But the plan received a poor response from the biggest public doctors' union yesterday, which warned against a lack of control over the overseas practitioners' qualifications if they did not take the exams.
Hong Kong Hospital Authority chairman Anthony Wu Ting-yuk said yesterday a programme was being worked out to use overseas doctors to relieve the burden on the local workforce in the short term.
The two universities with medical faculties will also increase medical intakes in coming years. But it takes six years to train a doctor.
The authority plans to apply to the Medical Council for 'limited registrations' for plastic surgeons and cardiothoracic (heart, chest and lung) surgeons from overseas.
Such registrations would mean those doctors would not need to take the Hong Kong licensing examination, though they could only work at public hospitals and clinics.
