Medical Association: Foreign Doctors Must Sit Exam

The Hong Kong Medical Association says its members have overwhelmingly rejected calls to allow doctors trained overseas to work in Hong Kong's public hospitals without taking local exams.

The association said it surveyed more than 3,000 doctors on staff shortages in the sector and how they could be addressed. More than 77 percent said there was a manpower shortage.

But asked whether non-locally-trained doctors should be allowed to register without taking exams, 68 percent said no.

However there was support for exempting specialists trained overseas from the usual internship requirements, as long as they worked in public hospitals for a specific period of time.

Asked who was to blame for the staff shortages, a majority of doctors cited failures in government policy and mismanagement by the Hospital Authority.

Association president Dr Ho Chung-ping, said: " We have to make sure there is a standard in the medical field. We cannot, just because we are very short of people, reduce the standard."