Bulletin Number Five 1986

An Interview with Professor G.H. Choa Q: As the founding Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, you must have watched with pride the first medical graduates marching before you to receive their degrees from the Pro-Chancellor during the 32nd Congregation. What are your expectations of our medical graduates? A: I hope they will all be not only professionally competent but ethically and morally of the highest standard. Also, I hope they will dedicate themselves to public service because they have spent a great deal of public money before they have completed their training, so they must give something back. Q: Launching a faculty, especially a Faculty of Medicine ， is no easy task. What were your first tasks in the launching of the medical Faculty in this University? A: Making an overall plan which included (a) the layout of the pre-clinical and clinical buildings, (b) the staff requirement and the recruitment of heads of departments, (c) the design of the curriculum and (d) the criteria and procedure for the admission of students. Q: Medicine is such a vast subject which advances all the time, can it be covered in the curriculum? A: The objective is to teach the students basic knowledge in all the subjects without going into minute details and train them as general practitioners. This can be achieved in the 5-year curriculum. For specialization, the students will have to undergo further postgraduate training. Q: You have been a medical practitioner, a medical educator, a medical administrator and a medical historian. Which of these various roles do you enjoy most? A: My first love has always been clinical work combined with teaching students, but I accepted a change of role to administrator after some twenty years; medical history is only a hobby. Q: Why have you taken up the study of medical history as a hobby? A: Actually, one reads about medical history all the time. For instance, if you look up any disease, you will find out how it was discovered and by whom, and how it has progressed. In other words, medical history provides the answers to many questions concerning the development of existing knowledge. It should be of interest to any student of medicine and in fact it broadens his education and outlook. Q: If you would excuse me ， you are a very deceptive person — you have hidden your humaneness under a stem face. Would you attribute your humaneness to your personality or to your training? A: My training. In the training of a doctor, great emphasis is laid on discipline. I was brought up in it and I have always tried to infuse it into others. Without discipline, no one can succeed in the medical profession, but at the same time, without compassion and sympathy, no one can be a good doctor. Q: Am I correct in saying that in your medical practice you are not only concerned with treating the disease hut also the patient?Isconcern for the patient as a human being essential for the making of a good doctor? A: Absolutely essential, a doctor has to treat his patients (also their relatives sometimes) as human beings and must always try to establish a good doctor-patient relationship, without which no treatment of their illnesses can be successfully carried out. Q: What can a teacher of medicine do to cultivate in the students this attitude? A: By personal example and constant reminder that the patient is a human being, not just a case. Q ： How will your past experience help you to be an effective member of the UPGC? A: I suppose I can be of some help because of my knowledge of and experience in the various aspects of the medical scene in Hong Kong as I have now worked for nearly forty years spread over the two Universities and the Government. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 11