Hong Kong must improve its training of medical school students and supervision over intern doctors, a lawmaker and a community advocate have said after repeated blunders in the city’s hospitals involving misplaced feeding tubes.
Dr David Lam Tzit-yuen, a lawmaker representing the medical and health services sector, questioned the communication process at public hospitals, as experts had made recommendations to the Hospital Authority in August on how to prevent such mistakes after reviewing a similar earlier case.
Tim Pang Hung-cheong from the Society for Community Organisation called the debacle “unacceptable”, even as he acknowledged the blunder could not be entirely blamed on the intern.
“This concerns the communication mechanism [in a hospital],” Lam told a radio programme on Friday. “Information should be passed down in a targeted way … and may require reminders and discussion.”
According to the hospital in Chai Wan, the blunder which left the elderly patient in a critical condition was likely to have been caused by the intern doctor wrongly assessing an X-ray scan used to confirm the location of the feeding tube.
