Hong Kong Hospital Authority rejects claim that locals can’t secure residencies

Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority has rejected a claim from a social media user that graduates from the city’s medical schools are unable to secure residencies because of the government’s budget deficit and labour policies.

The authority on Tuesday evening said it provided “sufficient training places” for all local medical students to complete their internships each year and also employed all eligible local graduates for specialist training in public hospitals.

“For many years, the Hospital Authority has been dedicated to nurturing healthcare professionals according to this principle, irrespective of its financial situation or the recruitment of non-locally trained healthcare professionals,” it said.

In a post on Threads on Friday, a user named vibrant_wasabi said a friend, who was an intern, recently received a letter of rejection from the authority after applying for a resident trainee position.

“The Hospital Authority does not have enough money to hire all the graduates,” the user wrote. “I am not discouraging those who are considering studying medicine, but think thrice if you are mentally prepared for such uncertainty.”

The post also cited statistics on resident trainee allocation and said the authority only had 510 vacancies for this year’s batch of 530 graduates.

Without elaborating on why the application was rejected, the user blamed the government for recruiting doctors from overseas and increasing unemployment among medical school graduates.