Bulletin Autumn 1978

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 behaviouralsciences order to appreciate the social and psychological aspects of medical and health problems. This ties in with the university policy of 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 underco become more community-minded and see the need for their services in the public sector whether as a general practitioner, a specialist or a community physician. It is also intended to prepare some of them for an academic career so that by taking up teaching appointments they will fill another need in the public service. It should be possible to assign some selected students some minor roles in research programmes. When the faculty is fully developed and after the graduation of the first batch of students, postgraduate training programmes in the various departments will be organized. It is further hoped that eventually the medical school will be able to offer continuing edu- cation not only for our own students, but for all practitioners serving in the East New Territories region. For instance, refresher courses and seminars conducted annually at our medical school, on campus or in the hospital, would serve the purpose expedi- tiously. New Breed of Doctors It is the aim of the education programme in every medical school to give the students a broad edu- cation in both the theory and the practice of medicine. Stude ts are expected to learn no only from books and lecture notes, but also from practical demonstra- tions; indeed, less of the former and more of the latter is better for them. They should be taught to observe and think rather than use their memory to assimilate knowledge. In this new Medical School, it will be the responsibility of all teachers to use these methods of teaching right from the start. They will be helped by having facilities such as multi-disciplinary laboratories, audio-visual aid laboratories, seminar rooms and clinical investigation areas. The reasons for taking a different approach, and the philosophy behind our education programme, are to produce a new breed of doctors for Hong Kong who are willing to spend their entire career in the service of the M of entering private practice after biding their time in hospital posts for a limited period. This will be no easy task in the circumstances of Hong Kong where success in all walks of life is measured in terms of wealth and material gain. But it is the same the world over, and the a tempt must be made ven though it involves changing people's way of thinking and their concept of earning a good living. I have high hopes that with a staff of energetic and dedicated teachers and the right kind of students, we shall not only produce more doctors to serve in the medical and health services in Hong Kong, but make a significant contribution towards medical educati the region have achieved in the past twenty-five years, as we shall presently hear about. 16