Training Hong Kong nurses to give eye injections could ‘reduce patient waiting times, cut workload for doctors’
- Intravitreal injections are used to treat age-related macular degeneration and generally handled by doctors, with patients waiting average of three months for shots
- Pilot scheme at Christian United Hospital and Tseung Kwan O Hospital has reduced waiting times for jabs to four weeks
Training nurses at Hong Kong’s public hospitals to administer eye injections could help reduce waiting times for patients and cut doctors’ heavy workloads, according to medical specialists behind an ongoing pilot scheme.
Generally handled by doctors in Hong Kong, intravitreal injections are used to treat central vision blurring caused by age-related macular degeneration. Under the current arrangement, patients wait an average of three months to receive their shots.
Professor Kenneth Li Kai-wang, the ophthalmology department service chief for the Kowloon East hospital cluster, said some 25 per cent of the area’s intravitreal injections had been administered by nurses.
“If we can normalise the scheme and have more nurses delivering intravenous injections, I am confident that we can further reduce patients’ waiting time,” he said, adding that such a move could help free up doctors to handle other cases.
Data from the Health Bureau provided to the Legislative Council on March 15 found Hong Kong’s public hospitals were contending with a lack of manpower, after losing 1,247 doctors between April 2020 and the end of 2022, with only 15 per cent of them retiring.