While the international community laudes Hong Kong's highly efficient and award-winning healthcare system, countless young nurses are working themselves to the bone, single-handedly managing an extremely strained nurse-to-patient ratio. In the 2025 CEOWORLD Global Healthcare Index, Hong Kong ranks 23rd, boasting outstanding life expectancy and infant survival rates. However, behind this accolade lies the unbearable exhaustion of frontline staff. With an aging population and a surge in chronic diseases, the pressure on the public healthcare system will only intensify, inevitably exacerbating the challenges faced by healthcare workers.
Rigid mechanisms weaken frontline morale
The Hospital Authority has long faced a shortage of nursing staff, prompting a Legislative Council inquiry that pointed to the Authority's gradual reduction of its self-selected part-time nurses with valuable clinical experience. Recent reports have revealed that nurses who switch from full-time to part-time positions are not having their contracts renewed; those who try to return to full-time to keep their jobs are facing a reduction in their starting salary as registered nurses. Healthcare personnel are crucial for safeguarding public health and well-being. How can society properly retain these highly dedicated healthcare professionals, ensuring they feel respected and valued, so they can continue to contribute their expertise within the medical system?
This semester, while supervising undergraduate theses, I interviewed several young healthcare professionals and discovered that their decision to enter the profession was heavily influenced by the "herd effect." Many young people are initially attracted simply by high salaries, but lack a deeper sense of inner mission. When they enter the high-pressure clinical environment, money alone is simply not enough to build a solid psychological defense. If policies neglect to cultivate professional identity and a sense of mission in the new generation, they will only further erode the morale of these "guardians."
On May 12th, International Nurses Day, this year's theme is "Our Nurses, Our Future, Empowering Nurses, Saving Lives." The International Council of Nurses emphasizes the importance of creating a supportive working environment for nurses to utilize their professional skills. To fulfill their noble mission of providing emergency care, the primary condition is ensuring that nurses can focus on their work without worries. Authorities urgently need to comprehensively review the salary systems for full-time and part-time nurses, striving to maintain competitiveness with the private market and retaining flexible work arrangements for healthcare workers with family needs. Ensuring they receive excellent and fair treatment when switching between full-time and part-time positions is the fundamental solution to retaining talent.
Empowering nurses to lead digital transformation
Retaining talent requires more than just compensation and benefits; it also necessitates opening up new professional career paths for them. At a 2025 seminar, senior officials from the Hospital Authority pointed out that digital transformation is key to addressing growing healthcare needs and explicitly stated the need to empower frontline staff to lead projects. However, a 2025 feature article in the *International Journal of Medical Informatics* highlighted three major limitations in technology application: while younger practitioners are inclined to use smart healthcare, experienced professionals lack the willingness; frontline staff are too busy with heavy clinical practice to effectively utilize smart tools; and healthcare institutions generally lack systematic training in smart healthcare. These pain points are highly relevant to Hong Kong.
Nurses, as the backbone of the frontline healthcare system, possess extensive experience in both patient care and administrative work, making them well-suited to play a crucial role in the transition. The government and tertiary institutions should further enhance registered nurse training programs to deepen their understanding of medical technology, enabling them to not only know what to do but also why. Furthermore, the authorities can provide special funding for continuing education, prioritizing experienced part-time nurses to learn medical technology in their spare time, nurturing them to gradually assume the role of technology project managers. By allowing frontline nurses who best understand the pain points of wards to personally propose solutions and integrate resources, the professional strength of these angels in white can be amplified, ensuring the steady progress of Hong Kong's public healthcare system.
[Hong Kong 01]: https://www.hk01.com/article/60349827?utm_source=01articlecopy&utm_medium=referral
