Letters | Three cheers for Hong Kong’s frontline medical and emergency services
- Emergency services leapt into action after being notified of a serious accident involving a fall down the stairs
- We were integrated into a reassuring process of how Hong Kong deals with a medical emergency, and felt comforted at every stage by empathetic professionals doing their jobs well
This is a note of commendation and gratitude for the good folks who work on the front line of Hong Kong’s health care system and those who work behind the scenes in managing and operating our emergency services. We fortunately have not had much occasion to test the system as a family over many years in Hong Kong, but just a week ago we saw some of the best parts of this large and complex organisation in action.
We had a serious mishap at home involving an accidental tumble down a staircase, with some immediately apparent head and leg injuries, compounded by a combination of blood and broken glass on the scene. A quick call to 999 for an ambulance started a chain of events that swept us along and would continue to grow as the situation developed over the next six hours.
It would eventually involve three ground-based ambulance transfers and an air ambulance flight, the outstanding and very supportive nursing staff on night duty in our local Lamma (North) clinic along with the duty doctor on call, and then the excellent triage staff, doctor, attending nurses and X-ray team at Ruttonjee Hospital, and of course the supporting professionals who work in the background and out of public view.
Everyone communicated and cooperated smoothly at every stage, with teams from the Fire Services Department, Department of Health, Hospital Authority and Government Flying Service all working seamlessly to deal, in turn and as one, with an urgent situation.
From first calling for an ambulance on an island at 6pm to returning home just after midnight, we were integrated into a reassuring process of how Hong Kong deals with a medical emergency, and felt reassured at every stage by empathetic professionals doing their jobs well.
So, for us, a comparatively happy ending to a situation which could have gone badly wrong at different points, and not only immense gratitude for everyone who did their jobs so well on one weekday evening, but also a great sense of pride in our absolutely world-class emergency services and health care system in Hong Kong.
Thank you one and all, for a job well done.
Dan Peterson, Lamma
