Supply

You may think I was mad with such a suggestion of promotion.

Not necessarily. In fact, it becomes entirely workable and would probably be materialized if the plan is slightly modified (for example, promotion to assistant consultant after passing the membership examination) and spread out the promotion exercise to two or three years.

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But, let's discuss the more serious problem: How about employing more doctors?

Alas, that's a naive idea - there just aren't enough supply.

(One of my colleagues told me that for the public sector alone, there would be nearly 500 vacancies in the coming July - but there are only around 250 fresh graduates.)

Of course we can easily blame the current problem to our noble but thick-headed council members (alas, many of them did not get elected again), who decided to cut down the number of medical students some years ago. It takes a few years after you increase the number of medical students before you could have more medical graduates.

"But we shall be seeing more graduates in the coming few years, and there are an increasing number to come." You may argue.

In fact, I was thinking of the same. But, when I mentioned the inevitable need of increasing the number of medical students to KS (during the coffee break of the membership examination), the professor of neurology said grimly, “You know, it’s not that simple.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The workload of our academic staff is quite heavy already. If you wish to recruit more medical students, you also need to employ more teaching staff.”

“I suppose that’s quite natural?” I could not see his point.

“Alas, where do all these new professors come from? If you think a clinical job in the public hospital is not attractive for new fellows, junior academic posts are distinctly repelling!” He sighed.

“I know what you mean now,” I was forced to agree, “They have a equal share of clinical duty as their counterparts in Hospital Authority, they have to do more teaching, and, the worst of all, their prospect hinges on neither of these two tasks, but their research output – which they hardly have any time to do.”