We should continue to build and strengthen our discipline as Family Medicine practitioners through ensuring excellent exposure to General Practice in medical schools, strong postgraduate Family Medicine specialty training, ongoing career development and last but not least, building research capacity in primary health care. We should be proud of our unique characteristics as we are trained to deal with people across all life stages, deal with all types of health problems at point of first contact in the community and offer service that is “comprehensive, accessible, focuses on a specific community, allows continuity over time, and is centred on the care of people not specific parts of  their bodies or disease”. We should seek humanity and act humanely in our practice by providing services focusing on the needs of patients. In addition, Professor Howe also reminded us that the World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA) is always there to back up family doctors in the pursue of universal health coverage. 

Professor Rodger Charlton also shared his perspectives on UK primary care in the same issue of our College journal. He started his article, “New models of primary care in the UK”, by quoting Heraclitus the Philosopher, “The only constant in life is change” in the latest volume of The Hong Kong Practitioners and shared with us the significant change of consultation brought by technology advancement in UK. The traditional face-to-face consultation is rapidly evolving to digital consultation (or e-consultation) through smart phone devices. New innovative model of care was developed in response to the increasing demand for health care and patients’ expectations for instant access and the UK GP workforce crisis relating to recruitment and retention. E-consultation has taken off in 2017 with a new organisation called “GP at Hand”, working with Babylon, which is said to be a leading digital health provider in UK. The change has not only brought challenges to the conventional consultation models, but also to one of the fundamental values in primary health care, continuity of care, and hence, to the mutual trust relationship between a family doctor and his/ her patients. The change in UK may have a wider impact as digital consultation seeks to expand further afield. Professor Charlton reminded other countries about the need to be prepared and to embrace the new changes so as to ensure the key attributes of accessible, good, personal and patientcentred care are maintained in the community.

Words cannot express how saddened we are learning about the bushfires that have caused serious damages in various parts of Australia. Our hearts are with our colleagues, friends and families of RACGP as well as everyone in Australia. We do hope that things will be settling back to normal very soon and we send our best wishes from Hong Kong.

January is a time for setting goals, embarking upon adventures and putting together personal plans. To achieve the targets set can be one of the best incentives to spark off innovations. Hope that you are ready for the new challenges in the new year! 

Kung Hei Fat Choi in the Lunar New Year of the Rat!

Dr. David V K CHAO