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Regarding the manpower situation and morale of nursing staff in public hospitals, the Chief Manager (Nursing) of the Hospital Authority (HA), Dr Susie Lum, today (March 31) said that the Authority has been fully aware of and also attaching great importance to the manpower problem and work pressure facing the frontline nurses. Dr Lum highly appreciates the dedication and professionalism of all the nurses who have been performing their patient care duties diligently under an extremely challenging environment
"We pledged to provide all available support to our nurses. HA has been closely monitoring the nursing manpower and turnover rate in recent years. We are now working with our nurses to formulate appropriate measures to meet the challenges ahead with the aim to providing quality nursing care for needy patients,ˇ± Dr Lum remarked.
"HA has established a taskforce comprising of frontline nurses to review and enhance the career development and service conditions for nurses. We pledged to recruit 600 additional full-time nurses in 2007-08. The recruitment process has started already. So far a total of 46 full-time and 33 part-time nurses have been recruited. We also plan to train additional nurses through our registered nurse and enrolled nurses training programmes to boost up the supply of nurses for the public, private and social welfare sector. Last year, a total of 550 nurses were recruited. ˇ°
"In the areas of professional development and training for nurses, we will continue to strengthen their professional career path; to offer more promotion opportunities; to provide a two-year structured ˇ°Preceptorship Schemeˇ± to newly graduated nurses; to provide training subsidy for Registered and Enrolled nurses to take conversion programmes; and to provide opportunities for nursing staff to study advanced or specialty training programmes. Last year, we introduced 123 Advanced Practice Nurse posts to offer promotional opportunities as a way to retain talented staff.ˇ±
Dr Lum further pointed out that there are other measures to attract and retain nursing staff in public hospitals. These include offering permanent employment terms to eligible nurses; introduction of flexible continuous night shift to reduce the frequency of night shifts for nurses; encashment of accumulated annual leave. In order to lure more resigned nurses to re-join the public hospital workforce, HA is offering an attractive part-time employment package to them by counting in their years of experience.
"Public hospitals are now having over 19,000 nurses. The annual turnover rate in 2006-07 was about 3.2%. To help relieve the work pressures and tight manpower situation of frontline nurses, HA has been employing supporting staff to assist in the areas of clerical duties. However, those assistants will not be deployed for nursing duties in the wards,ˇ± Dr Lum stressed.
Ends/Saturday, March 31, 2007
Issued at HKT 17:06
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