Hong Kong Hospitals

During our first month in Hong Kong, Alexa and I have learned so many new things! It is so fun exploring the city, and we have found it very easy to make observations related to health care. First, there are signs pretty much everywhere you go reminding you to cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. There are also sinks in a lot of public areas so that people can wash their hands. It is very common to see people walking around either with a mask on, or covering their nose and mouth with a tissue. We have also learned quite a bit about traditional Chinese medicine in one of our classes, which I can say is very different than Western medicine!

We got a tour of Queen Mary Hospital, which is the teaching hospital for HKU. QMH is a 1,500 bed hospital that serves 3 of the 18 districts in Hong Kong. It is the most comprehensive of the 7 hospitals in the surrounding area, with 60 wards and 19 different specialties. There were a few things that struck us, not only in the hospital, but also in the way nursing works here. One thing that is different about nursing itself is that nurses must work for at least five years before they can specialize is anything. Pretty much, they must work on a general medical or surgical floor before moving to a different area. Another interesting thing is that nurses can train at the hospital and not go to a university. This three year program requires the nurses to live in dorm/apartment style housing right on the hospital’s campus for their first year as a nurse.

One of the biggest differences that we have found in the hospitals here is that there are different units for male and female patients. It is extremely uncommon for a male nurse to care for a female patient, and mostly male nurses care for male patients. One of the units we had a chance to visit on our tour was a holding floor for patients who came to the emergency department and need to be admitted. The unit was mixed with both genders and the nurses expressed how uncommon this was and that it was against their culture. We found this very surprising, as patient’s genders do not usually play a role in nursing assignments back at home. Another interesting thing was the way the units were set up. There are no private rooms, and the curtains that are there to provide privacy are always open. It was basically just one big room with a bunch of beds! The beds were all very close together and when a doctor or nurse was talking to a patient, everyone in the vicinity could also hear their conversation. They do not use much electronic charting, but there was one computer that showed patient records and x-rays. This computer was not hidden at all, and at least 3 patients could easily see the screen. They have patient confidentiality rules here, but they don’t seem to be as strict as ours. One other thing that was interesting to us was that there was only one sink on the unit, which had 27 beds. We found this to be a potential problem for many different reasons. All of these things were interesting, but I think we got the biggest shock when we heard how many patients a nurse usually has each shift. On average, each nurse is responsible for ten patients!! This number can be increased to fourteen patients, depending on how busy the day is.

We are meeting with our project facilitator today and look forward to finalizing our project! We plan to try to improve the social skills and acceptance between Chinese children and ethnic minority children using a fun and interactive game that will allow the children to share things about themselves and get to know their peers. Until next time!