Recruiting doctors from overseas
There has been much controversy over the issue of recruiting doctors from overseas. It is apparent that there is a serious shortage of medical professionals in public hospitals which seriously affects the quality of service.
Different parties including patients, the government, private doctors and doctors serving in the public hospitals, hold different views towards this issue. Their grounds are based on their own interests. Write an article to the youth magazine illustrating the issue and discuss both the benefits and drawbacks of recruiting doctors from overseas.
Overseas doctors, blessings or perils?
While foreign experts are welcomed to Hong Kong in multiple aspects, the issue of importing overseas doctors has provoked a fire case debate among the medical professions. Many are under the impression that doctors from overseas are incompatible to the native ones qualitatively, but others hold a viewpoint that the supply of them can remedy the pressing shortage of physicians. Despite the clear upsides and downsides of the proposed recruitment, in the following, I shall try to explain the pros and cons from the perspectives of different stakeholders.
To begin with, in order to measure the value of such a policy, not only does its content need to be evaluated, but also the rationale behind the initiators of it. Due to the decline in the number of medical graduates and escalating rate of resignation, the public hospitals are encountering a sharpening problem of doctors insufficiency. To come forward with a solution, the hospital authority proposes a plan to employ doctors from overseas without examinations. The foreign doctors, though will be carefully picked, will be directly put into sectors like emergency wards and other places. It means that a lot of trust is given to those physicians on their quality of medical services. It is where controversies focus and attack. From the above illustration, it seems the plan is the only way out to overcome the existing hurdles.
Based on the above circumstances, the employment programme may do good or bad to different parties.
From the perspective of the government, recruiting foreign doctors serve as an ideal expedient to relieve public outcry. Since pressure groups like the Patients Welfare Association keeps on putting the burden on the authority about the shortage of physicians, the programme can show the decisiveness and endeavour of them on eradicating the problem. The imported medical experts are able to alleviate the shortage and pacify the maddening crowd. Thus the discontent towards the government can be reduced to a lower level. It is a clear advantage for the aggravating government.
From the perspective of the doctors of the private sector, it is a blessing to them as the policy averts the situation of working overtime or too intensively. In the present condition, as there are mounting cases of patients but few on-duty doctors available in the public hospitals, excessive workload is assigned to the physicians. Even if they have breaks after a rotation, the mental and physical detriments caused in times of working are simply irrecoverable. Nevertheless, once the policy is implemented, local doctors serving in the public sector can receive a helping hand from the foreigners. The average number of cases they have to deal with will tremendously fall. As a result, the recruitment redeems the plight of these physicians.
However, even though the government perceives the policy with many credits, some take it with a pinch of salt as they question the proficiency of the physicians recruited overseas.
In the eyes of patients, they cast doubts on the plan as it may allocate burden on maintaining the overall quality of medical services. Even though there are both mechanisms and instructions to supervise the foreign doctors, standardization of their services is difficult since they receive different education. It is even harder to scrutinize the moral standard of these physicians, such as the decisions of saving the patients’ lives or not when the chances of survival are slim. More and more medical blunders may be resulted when the service is not guaranteed with a certain quality. With their own interests in mind, the patients must not ignore the downside.
Doctors serving in private sectors, in line with the patients, discredit the policy because it may backfire to harm the whole medial system, which in return affects their interests. Since the livelihood of them mainly lies on their reputation, a quality downfall in the industry will lead to customers questioning the service of them, especially foreign patients like the mainland pregnants. Then if the whole service and system are blamed, these physicians inevitably must bear the brunt for recruiting foreign doctors, and the subsequent inconsistency of quality.
To conclude, a question mark hangs over the effectiveness of such a plan. It will launch a long-term effect on the medical system if more and more overseas doctors are recruited. However, a retreat of the priority given to the rights of patients due to the recruitment is one of the questions.