PEOPLE FIRST: Our Students An education at HKUMed remains highly regarded among students, as we saw in a recent focus group exercise that identified our strong international exposure and connections, our heritage and prestige, our alumni network, and our professionalism as key attractions for enrolling here. I would like to add one thing to that list. The Faculty puts students and their well-being at the centre of every educational programme we provide. Yes, we have high standards, but we also offer strong support for students. This point is sometimes missed when potential students and their parents look at HKUMed. The chatter is about our high standards and not our heart. We have therefore launched a campaign to better understand their perceptions and promote the ways in which we support and prioritise our students’ well-being. This manifests in multiple ways. On any given day, you are likely to see individual academic staff sitting down to lunch with their students to offer guidance or simply collegiality. Faculty-level support includes a wide range of well-being programmes and counselling and academic advisory services for students across all seven undergraduate teaching programmes. We also take well-being seriously within our curricula. The medical humanities and ethics curriculum was introduced 10 years ago to explore the human side of medicine from not only the patient’s perspective but also that of the doctor, who bears the heavy responsibility of treating and alleviating suffering. I spoke on this topic in May at the first L.C. Chan Memorial Lecture in Medical Humanities, as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations. I feel this curriculum is now more important than ever. Students face many upheavals due to rapid technological progress and societal change, but the need to be humble and focus on the people in our care will endure. This year we also included a new Doctors in Society module in the Medical Humanities Curriculum to reinforce the teaching of professionalism in the context of socio-political changes and social responsibility. And we launched the Assistant Internship to better prepare senior medical students to serve patients. 15
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