A New Era Begins 1975-78

medical school for the first three years after teaching commences. As the teaching hospital is in fact the Government regional hospital for the East New Territories region, i t will be included in the public works programme to be financed by the Government. I now turn to the staffing of the new school, particularly in the clinical departments at the hospital. There will be both academic and Government staff, thus the Professors and their Senior Lecturers and Lecturers will provide the services besides teaching, while the Govern- ment doctors will be honorary lecturers or tutors. The Medical Academic Advisory Committee has recommended the establishment of some 15 chairs covering both pre-clinical and clinical subjects. It is expected that a considerable number of the staff, especially the chair-holders, will have to be recruited from abroad. To recruit them, the net will be cast widely and it is hoped that the challenge and the opportunity will attract the best people. The compilation of the curriculum will be left to the appointees but it is the Advisory Committee's wish that renovations should be introduced within reasonable limits and integration of pre-clinical and clinical studies attempted as far as possible. Having recapitulated our progress up to the present moment, I would now like to define the aim of the school, which will be the guiding principle for future development. Our objective is to give the students a medical education and to prepare them to serve the community. It has been said that the main reason for establishing the school is to produce 100 additional doctors for the medical and health services. This will be explained to the students on the day they begin at the University and thereafter they will be constantly reminded of their future roles in the public service. While in the pre-medical year, students will have to attend a course on the behavioural sciences which will include sociology and psychology, in order to appreciate the social and psychological aspects of medical and health problems. This ties in wi th the university policy o f offering General Education in the first year in all faculties, in order to broaden students' knowledge and viewpoint in areas complementary to their specialisms. There is also a dual teaching system to give students both subject-orientated teaching related to their specialist discipline, and small-group student-orientated teaching to build in the students habits and aptitudes of mind characteristic of the expert in their chosen fields and relevant to the solution of the kind of problems they are likely to encounter later in life; and to equip them for meeting changes in a rapidly changing world. This principle of student-orientated teaching will be brought into practice, in the case of medical students, in their pre-medical and pre-clinical years. They will be given opportunities to see how the medical and health services are administered and what facilities, both curative and preventive, are available for the delivery of primary patient care to the general public. Later, when they study community medicine, they will have further opportunities to participate in the day-to-day field work carried out by health officers and nurses, in either people's homes or institutions. For practical purposes, the teaching of general practice will be included in the curriculum under 52