Exchanges with the Mainland nurses to tap one another’s strengths

GBA Specialty Nursing Knowledge-exchange Programme is included in the GBA Healthcare Talents Exchange Programmes. HA has a long-term partnership in nursing profession with the Mainland for years. Tracing back to the ‘Specialty Nursing Training Programme for Guangdong (GD) Province’ launched in 2007, HA had provided training for nurses from GD Province. Since then, Hong Kong has maintained communication with the Mainland through various nursing activities and seminars etc. in different platforms. Later on, there were local nurses’ visiting to the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals in GD Province under the TCM Exchange Programme. Colleagues who had participated in these programmes before consider the GBA exchange programmes a good opportunity to learn from one another and foster the collaboration between healthcare professionals in Hong Kong and the Mainland.

Between 2007 to 2011, the ‘Specialty Nursing Training Programme for GD Province’ organised by HA had recruited GD nurses from various specialties as trainees to receive training and perform clinical nursing in public hospitals in Hong Kong. The then Department Operations Manager of Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department Lau Ping-fat (above) prepared for the training in A&E at that time, and was getting along with GD nurses for a year. He appreciates their proactive attitude who had developed great friendships with local counterparts.

Lau mentions that the GD nurses performed clinical trainings in A&E Departments under the supervision of local nurses. “They were adaptable and well-skilled in providing intravenous therapy for patients. Meanwhile, the GD nurses could facilitate communication with A&E patients who speak dialects other than Cantonese. They returned to the GD hospitals with experiences gained in Hong Kong, such as triage system. This shows that we can learn from each other in the exchange of experience and improve ourselves,” says Lau.

Advanced Practice Nurse of Department of Clinical Oncology of Tuen Mun Hospital Melvin Chan (above) visited the Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine to observe the clinical services of local TCM practitioners for a month in 2016. He recalls that the exchange was of great help to Integrated Chinese-Western Medicine Programme in oncology department. “The Chinese medicine hospital emphasises patient education. For example, when patients suffer from nausea and vomiting, practitioners in Hong Kong would usually give antiemetic drugs or injection. But the Mainland practitioners would teach patients to massage their acupuncture points so that patients can relieve symptoms in everyday life. I have become more familiar with TCM nursing since then, so that I can help patients to have a better understanding of integrated Chinese-Western medicine,” says Melvin.