The thinking of re-engineering resources
Dr Ko Tak-chuenConsultant (Ophthalmology)
Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital / Tung Wah Eastern Hospital
As the year advances, what we expect in medical services and how we train our people have been almost different from the way we did 30 years ago. Dr Ko Tak-chuen, who joined the Ophthalmology in Hong Kong East since 1990, believes that public hospital services must be tailored to the specific and prevailing circumstances. Dating back to the time when he devoted to the medical field, hospital beds were constantly in grave needs, whereas ambulatory care is broadly welcomed nowadays. The conventional approach to continuously providing more beds and strengthening manpower should no longer be the only solution. Additionally, making the best use of the currently available resources, or in other words, ‘re-engineering’ resources, is equally important.
Progress should not be made in only how we provide service, but also the way we think. “During my internship, I used to follow mentors and learn from the way they perform an operation. Nowadays, junior doctors would research for complex cases online and ask questions, thus I have to keep learning to achieve mutual learning goal with them.”
Dr Ko also puts emphasis on teamwork by valuing the opinions of his colleagues and thinking outside the box. Taking the Ophthalmology Service Enhancement Programme in the Hong Kong East Cluster as an example, “I was proposing that the Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital and Tung Wah Eastern Hospital (TWEH) shall arrange day surgery for the patients with cataract and follow up hospitalised cases separately. However, my frontline team instead advised TWEH to be fully in charge of scheduling the surgery for patients from both hospitals. With the support from our administration and IT team, this suggestion can help prevent repetitive or missing follow-up cases as well as the redundancy in the manpower deployment, and to streamline the operation. In my opinion, their suggestion is more feasible, having considered that I may lack the hand-on experience of being at the frontline and getting in touch with the patients. Bearing this in mind, I always value the voice of my colleagues. With everything all set, the programme is expected to be implemented in the third quarter this year.”