ANNEXURE 2.
Extract from a Report to the University Court on the 16th November, 1948, "Provision of Facilities in the Future for Instruction in the Clinical Years of the Medical Curriculum”.
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2.
The Provision of Adequate Clinical Facilities for Under-graduate and Post-graduate Students. The number of students in each clinical year before the war averaged somewhere about 20 or upwards, and even then the clinical facilities in the Queen Mary Hospital were taxed to their uttermost. During the two or three years immediately before the war there was a greatly increased enrolment in the pre-medical classes and the first year class in 1941 number 104. At the time when the war broke out we were already very apprehensive of the difficulties which would be encountered when the se students entered their clinical years, but we were saved by the outbreak of war from having to face these difficulties. The figures for the post-war enrolment of first year medical students are as follows:
Enrolment in 1946
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•
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#t
1947 1948.
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•
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58 106 98
The actual number of students now studying in each of the 3 years is as follows (November 1948):
1st Year
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2nd 3rd
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•
•
98 71
70
This means that, even after allowing for every possible reason for depletion, elimination or wastage, we must anticipate classes numbering more than 50 students per annum qualifying for entry into the clinical years of the curriculum. This is a minimum figure, for, as is now generally known, students in the current 1st Year of Medicine were only admitted after a personal interview and careful selection, resulting in the elimination of those not judged capable of developing satisfactorily. This inevitably means that the number of students likely to drop out of the present first year class should be appreciably less than in former years and, in a sense, this only adds to our worries regarding the provision of an adequate clinical training during the 4th, 5th and 6th years of the course. If we accept the tentative figure of 50 students per year for the 3 clinical years, it means that, when all the years of the curriculum are functioning together again, we shall have to provide, at one and the same time, for the instruction of more than 150 clinical students. Our present position as regards teaching beds is absurdly inadequate, consisting of approximately 160 beds in the Queen Mary Hospital for instruction in all clinical subjects outside of Obstetrics, for which special and adequate provision is made in the Tsan Yuk Hospital. The obvious deduction of approximately one teaching bed for each clinical student is scarcely a fair way of putting the problem, as students are not working on the wards at all times during their three final years. But the fact remains that the great majority of their time is spent in clinical instruction and the number of teaching beds available for each student, even allowing for a certain amount of overlapping, could at no time exceed two under present conditions. At least six beds per student are necessary. In the London Hospital, where I trained, there were approximately 1000 beds, all available for teaching, with classes not greater in number than those with which we shall have to deal. This gave students at least 10 or 12 beds each for which they were individually responsible a very considerable difference from conditions which obtain here.
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In looking to the future we realise very clearly that the clinical facilities in the Queen Mary Hospital, though excellent in quality, are inadequate in quantity. One obvious solution would be to transform the whole of the Queen Mary Hospital into a teaching hospital, and this has been the ultimate hope of more than one member of the Medical Faculty. But such a solution would have depended on the establishment by Government of additional hospital facilities in the Colony (such as the projected new Hospital in Kowloon), and in present circumstances it does not seen feasible to pursue
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