Final Dialogue 2015 message to O&G doctors in HK

 

Dear Fellows, Members and Trainees,

This is one of the last messages I write to you in capacity as your care­taker. Time flies and my 3 terms of a year each is closing. I would thank everybody for the trust to let me a private practitioner, play my role in the College. When I counted numbers, I found that I have served the College non­stop for 23 years now, making me a very old guy in a sense. In 2013, I set a humble task to manage difference in the College. We united Council and fairness took priority. We demonstrated clearly that power was given no weight, and positive construction determined recognition. We upheld rules enforced with sense. Everyone in Council and committees contributed to these directions.

In the past year and without warning, the task to handle an indemnity crisis fell on our shoulders. In a sense, we are facing an Apache helicopter, and we have only an air balloon ‘heavily armed’ with spears, bows and arrows. We shall illustrate that power disparity is not the only determinant to results in a civilized world. We are supported by the professional fraternity and many friends during the indemnity crisis, not just because we are unfairly treated. At least part of the recognition originated from our appropriate focus to correction to factors within our own domain, instead of mere calls for help from society. From the start, we declared primary focus to risk management and prevention of avoidable mishaps. However much or small we may do, we have to exhaust our efforts, before others may willingly support us. In the time to come, College will follow up on this pledge. Existing and future indemnity providers will benefit, and we shall survive. Other stakeholders in society will also be convinced that it is advantageous to support us. On the contrary, had we functioned only as crying babies pleading for support, without our own explicit effort to tidy up our house, we would have been discarded by both the medical and lay society.

College is after standards. We started with standard of training, and focused on it for a long time. We just have a wake­up call that our domain must also include standard of service and even many other dimensions about support, in order that the specialty survives. History and experience teach, and we learn from them, instead of allowing our successors to repeat mishaps.

My young friends (anyone under 100 is young in spirits, anyone below my age is a baby), medicine is a noble service instead of a mere job. We are here because we choose to serve and we want to do good, and we are already lucky to be reasonably recognized by society. We may remember that the colors of our College mean service to HK (pink) over day (blue) and night (black). We certainly need good souls to join our service, and we shall treat them well, so that our noble service continues. We have some setbacks on recruitment recently, but certainly we shall recover. We may now face some difficulty, when young souls rightly weigh hardship of O&G among other factors during their choice of career. We may look into lifestyle of trainees and young specialists to find solutions.

Our mature leaders, please take care of each other. We shall preserve healthy positive competition, but prevent useless internal rivalry. We teach and help laggers, wherever they work, and however they fill their bowls of rice, and whichever their own lifestyle. I wish the last year illustrated a time honored saying, together we stand, divided we fall. We would be clever enough to avoid conflicts induced by resource, sectoral, unit or team tags. Respect from society may only be earned by recognized elites who are united by good causes beneficial to society.

I hope that my council has left to you all fellows a dependable office of the President, a trustworthy College, and a united specialty. Soon I shall gladly hand the Presidency over to Dr WC Leung. I am confident that he would bring our specialty to new levels of recognition.