Letters | Hong Kong can look to nurses and pharmacists to reduce family doctors’ burden

Readers discuss why the scope of practice of nursing and pharmacy should be expanded, and the need for improvement in the city’s postal service

Reading Time:2 minutes

People queue up for Covid-19 vaccines at the Java Road playground on January 6, 2023. During the pandemic, community nurses played an important role in many countries. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 11:30am, 4 May 2024

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at [email protected] or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification

Hong Kong does an excellent job of healthcare but can do even better by enhancing the role of healthcare practitioners in nursing and pharmacy. This would benefit patients in terms of accessibility, affordability and timing of treatment, and reduce the workload of family doctors.

I welcome the Legislative Council’s ongoing efforts to allow patients to access treatment directly from occupational therapists and physiotherapists without needing to consult a doctor first for a referral in certain circumstances, a measure outlined in the government’s Primary Healthcare Blueprint (2022). The blueprint also proposed allowing designated community pharmacies to dispense drugs and provide drug counselling services to Hospital Authority patients as an alternative to patients frequenting public clinics for follow-up visits.

But what about other healthcare practitioners? Many jurisdictions have reviewed the efficiency of their healthcare systems and recognised the need for prescribing practices to evolve. A more contemporary attitude towards inter-professional team-based care could empower nursing to improve patient access.

In Hong Kong, only physicians, dentists and Chinese medicine practitioners are allowed to prescribe drugs and medications. However, many countries already allow appropriately trained nurses, optometrists and pharmacists to carry out various levels of non-medical prescribing.

The full-time undergraduate degree programmes in nursing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and other universities in the city are among the longest in the world, at five years. We train our nursing students to be capable of being independent primary care practitioners, even though they are not allowed to fulfil this role completely in Hong Kong as professional nurses. How can nursing graduates today realise their full potential and benefit Hong Kong society?