¡§Dare you march on the streets on the issue of Mandatory CME!¡¨¡K ¡§Those march on the streets will be ¡¥Wing But Chiu Sang¡¦!¡¨¡K ¡§If you guys want to have named referendum on medical profession on the issue of Mandatory CME, we would propose further to have named referendum of the whole population of Hong Kong on the issue as well¡¨¡K¡¨You have to understand that the main interest of our Medical Council is to protect the health of the Public and we have to seek the opinion of the public on this issue too¡¨¡K¡¨It is to protect the public that we should go ahead with linking annual practising certificate with CME.¡¨ These are some of the remarks in the last policy meeting of the Medical Council of Hong Kong (MCHK) held on 5th November 2003.
On behalf of our Union, I have proposed a motion in the above mentioned policy meeting to urge the MCHK to conduct a named referendum within the medical profession on the issue of linking CME with renewal of annual practising certificate but it was defeated by 13 to 5, with one abstention. Before voting on the motion, I have purposely stressed that the issue was an absolute professional affair and in order to preserve our Professional Autonomy, I requested the lay members (appointed by the HKSAR Government) to abstain. Unfortunately, at least two of the three lay members present in the meeting have voted as indicated by the result of vote counts.
Later on, representatives from Hong Kong Medical Association proposed another motion to urge the MCHK to conduct an opinion survey within the Profession on CME linking with some minor penalties in the beginning and with the license to practice eventually (as reported by Dr. Tse Hung Hing in his ¡§35th Diary in MCHK¡¨ as printed on page x of this bulletin) but was again voted down by 10 to 8, with one abstention. Again, 3 important members of the Hong Kong Medical Association left the meeting before the actual casting of vote.
As such, your Council has decided that should we go any further, perhaps it is the right time for us to solicit your opinion and your support for more decisive actions: be it press release, collaboration with other professions, with patients¡¦ groups, taking a Sunday off for whole day CME by private practitioners, and even petition and march to the MCHK and the Government Headquarters. For such purpose, we decided to organize a forum in the Sunday Afternoon Symposium on 11th January 2004 to discuss on the way forward. (Please see circular no. xxx enclosed with this Bulletin) Irrespective of whether you have attended our Union¡¦s Sunday Afternoon CME symposia before, we do hope that you can try your best effort to join us to voice your opinion. You may find our united effort be more rewarding this time, especially after the 71 March and District Council Election this year.
Recently, I have discussed the CME issue with friends, patients, teachers, headmasters and even ex-headmasters who are over 75 years of age They have the impression that doctors and teachers are most self disciplined, hardworking and tend to have self regulated life long learning. A compulsory sort of education would be an insult to these professions and indeed would ruin badly the established patient-doctor and student-teacher relationships. This amounts to Government telling the public that doctors and teachers are substandard and too lazy to keep up. Such measures would increase mistrust between patients and doctors, mistrust between students and teachers. At the end of the day, any new legislature on the issue of Mandatory Continuing Education would bound to create gray areas for some in the professions to try every means to escape but on the other hand would create unnecessary hardship and pressure on most doctors and teachers. If there were future actions taken by us doctors, they would be ready to join and support, even in a march. So we are not all alone, and we should stand up and get our message across loud and clear to the Authority.
As for the time being, it is the duty of every one of you to go to your friends, patients, former classmates in various fields and professions to seek their support for our further move. According to Dr. E. K. Yeoh and Dr. Lo Wing Lok, the deadline for implementation of compulsory CME by the MCHK cannot be met in January 2005 due to tight schedule for bill submission in the Legislative Council and the earliest date for implementation of Mandatory CME by amending the Medical Registration Ordinance might be deferred until 2007, the year when our present Chief Executive of the HKSAR government should have retired. So there is still enough time for us to plan our future action to make things change.
Our patient-doctor relationship has already been ruined badly by HMOs and illegal sale of drugs in recent years, should we allow further destruction of the harmony between us and our patients with the introduction of Legislature with CME linking with our annual practising certificate? The answer depends on your determination in our actions to come. As a start, do join the coming forum on CME in January 2004!
Dr. Yeung Chiu Fat Henry
President' s message (Dec 2003)/Dec Bulletin/Pub10