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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Hospital Authority (HA) has all along been concerned with the manpower constraint and heavy workload faced by frontline nurses of public hospitals. HA Chairman, Mr Anthony Wu, said the Authority fully understands the challenges and difficulties faced by the nursing staff and that it would take time for the new recruits to build up the required experience and skills to replace the wastage. Mr Wu is committed to maintaining communication and dialogue with frontline nurses to listen to their concern and collaborate on the enhanced measures for retaining the nursing talents.
HA Chief Executive, Dr Leung Pak-yin, echoed that "we have been conducting staff forums in hospital clusters over the past month as part of our consultation process to solicit frontline nurses' views on a package of enhanced measures to recruit and retain nurses. These forums also enabled frontline nurses to express their views and concern directly to the Head Office nursing management team."
"We have already earmarked an additional allocation of $200 million this year (2011-12) to strengthen the recruitment and retaining of nursing manpower to continuously improve the working condition and career prospect of nurses. In the coming year we will continue the communication and consultation with our frontline nurses on the implementation of the enhanced measures."
Ends/Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Issued at HKT 20:22
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