Manpower crunch in sectors, a culture of sucking up to superiors for rewards and exploitation of flexible workforce among drivers.
Sixteen years into his career, the early memories of a horrible experience in which he worked for 60 hours on end are still fresh in the mind of Hong Kong doctor James Fung Tak-kwan.
Fung, 40, a general surgeon at Pok Oi Hospital in Yuen Long, says he was once put on two consecutive overnight on-call duties when interning at a local hospital, with each lasting more than 30 hours. He saw more than 100 patients in this span, and was eventually overwhelmed by fatigue.
“I couldn’t function well, and basically I could only copy what other doctors did,” he says. “Looking back, it was dangerous. It was not a humane working condition.”
After working for more than 60 hours straight, Fung took a three-hour nap before getting up to study for his exams, as competition among medical students was fierce.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3020023/security-guards-doctors-hong-kongs-overworking