Clinical management of microbial infections has been complicated by the emergence of novel infectious agents and antibiotic resistance. To meet new challenges on a variety of infection-related issues, the Department of Microbiology adopts a multi-pronged approach to address the increasing health care needs of the society. First, education and training of medical, nursing, research and other types of health care personnel is our pivotal role, with an objective of equipping them with the essential knowledge and skills required to tackle both conventional and new problems concerning bacterial, viral and fungal infections. Second, we perform in-depth research to investigate the origin and nature of specific clinical phenomena, with a hope of improving our understanding on epidemiology and pathogenesis, and leading to advances in diagnosis and treatment. Third, our staffs are also directly involved in the provision of clinical laboratory and consultation services to the Prince of Wales Hospital and other hospitals in the Hong Kong Hospital Authority New Territories East Cluster (NTE Cluster).

The teaching, research and clinical duties of the Department effectively complement each other. Our commitment to training health care professionals and postgraduate research students in parallel has a goal of ensuring that we can maintain not only a high standard of clinical services, but also, at the backstage, the capability to trace the roots of problems and devise solutions. In return, we expect that research findings can consistently bring in new concepts which may be incorporated into our teaching programmes, and help streamline clinical services. The unique setting of our teaching, research and clinical laboratories, in which they are all in close proximity to each other, greatly facilitates interactions between academic, research, clinical and laboratory staffs, and allows researchers to obtain first hand clinical data and readily collect specimens for research purposes.