Patient Benefits Our efforts to continuously improve our teaching and research, and widen our networks of collaboration, all have one goal in mind, which is to benefit patients. We want to ensure that our curricula and research ultimately translate into better patient outcomes. Here, too, we need to move with the times. In a sense, there is also a bottom-up focus developing in patient care. Primary healthcare, which starts well before patients should ever need hospital care, has at long last been given a boost by the government. The Primary Healthcare Blueprint was released a year ago – Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee in the School of Nursing, who was formerly Hong Kong’s Secretary for Food and Health, played a major role in its development – and it outlines the establishment of 18 district health centres across Hong Kong. Their purpose is to be a first point of contact for patient care, chronic disease management, health promotion and the like. From October this year, HKUMed assumed the role of Medical Consultant in three of these centres. This will have multiple benefits for patients and for us, enhancing professional training for our students and research into primary care. 14
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mzg4NDg0