Letters | Hong Kong can look to nurses and pharmacists to reduce family doctors’ burden
- Readers discuss why the scope of practice of nursing and pharmacy should be expanded, and the need for improvement in the city’s postal service
Hong Kong does an excellent job of healthcare but can do even better by enhancing the role of healthcare practitioners in nursing and pharmacy. This would benefit patients in terms of accessibility, affordability and timing of treatment, and reduce the workload of family doctors.
But what about other healthcare practitioners? Many jurisdictions have reviewed the efficiency of their healthcare systems and recognised the need for prescribing practices to evolve. A more contemporary attitude towards inter-professional team-based care could empower nursing to improve patient access.
In Hong Kong, only physicians, dentists and Chinese medicine practitioners are allowed to prescribe drugs and medications. However, many countries already allow appropriately trained nurses, optometrists and pharmacists to carry out various levels of non-medical prescribing.
The full-time undergraduate degree programmes in nursing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and other universities in the city are among the longest in the world, at five years. We train our nursing students to be capable of being independent primary care practitioners, even though they are not allowed to fulfil this role completely in Hong Kong as professional nurses. How can nursing graduates today realise their full potential and benefit Hong Kong society?
The relative absence of non-medical prescribing in Hong Kong has consequences for public health. Before walk-in appointments were made possible for Covid-19 vaccination, many older adults and elderly people in Hong Kong hesitated to get vaccinated because they were unsure whether they were medically suitable.
Although the government recommended that unsure people should discuss their suitability with their doctors, many did not want to pay to see a doctor just for this purpose. However, in some countries, community pharmacists and nurses can independently assess people’s suitability, as well as administer vaccines.
Increasing the scope of practice for nurses and pharmacists in Hong Kong would improve accessibility for patients, as well as reduce the burden on family doctors, particularly those in the public sector.
George Woo, emeritus professor, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Postal service can do better
“Let’s keep expectations of Hongkong Post realistic” (April 29) might have put more emphasis on the faltering services offered by Hongkong Post. Well over a year since the passing of the Covid pandemic, regular airmail services to a large number of countries or territories are not available , while my postbox has received no journals or magazines from Europe or North America in almost six weeks. As far as I can tell, no explanation for the situation is offered online.
The suggestion that there are “obsolete stamps worth millions needing to be disposed of” seems alarmist. Stamps are little bits of coloured paper used as receipts whose design or printing costs, I suspect, are covered by philatelic sales to date.
P. Kevin MacKeown, Mui Wo
