Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling has rejected claims that nurses trained outside Hong Kong are being hired instead of locally trained staff, saying only 55 of its nearly 30,000 nurses received their training outside Hong Kong.
Fan made the remarks after the authority’s general meeting on 24 September, amid an earlier dispute over whether places had been reserved for nurses trained in mainland China. He said the authority continued to prioritise locally trained nurses and that the 55 nurses trained outside Hong Kong did not represent a policy of replacing locally trained nurses.
He believed nurses trained outside Hong Kong with specified skills would be recruited only in special circumstances. The authority still had about 3,000 nursing posts vacant.
HK01 reported that 29 of the 55 nurses trained outside Hong Kong came from mainland China, while the authority hired 2,441 nurses and recorded 1,699 nurses leaving during the preceding 12 months.
As of the end of July, nursing turnover was 5.4%, compared with 6.6% in the same period a year earlier.