Public hospitals in Hong Kong may face a serious shortage of doctors in five year, as a survey found that 80 percent of junior doctors have decided to leave the Hospital Authority after obtaining specialist qualifications.

Based on the survey, carried out by the Frontline Doctors' Union, its chairman, Louis Cheung Chinpang, warned it was urgent for the authority to boost the morale of junior doctors by, for example, immediately fixing the "same work, different pay" situation among its 4,600 doctors.

The survey of 312 junior doctors who had worked for the authority for between one and six years found 79 percent had decided to enter private practice after they qualified as specialists ¡ª which normally takes seven to nine years of training, the South China Morning Post said yesterday. Fifty-five percent said they might leave even before they obtained their specialist qualifications.

The 312 doctors represent about one-third of the 1,000 junior doctors undergoing specialist training in public hospitals.

Those surveyed said they would consider staying in the public sector only if the Hospital Authority took steps to fix the employment relationship, such as the unreasonable pay system.

The problem of replacements would start to emerge in one or two years after more middle-ranking doctors began to leave, Cheung was quoted by the paper as saying.

"It will end up with only junior doctors and the most senior doctors staying in public hospitals in future. In that case, the senior doctors will be overloaded because they can no longer share their work with the middle-ranking doctors, while the junior ones are too inexperienced to help," said another union official.

Pay in the private sector is about 50 percent higher than that of public hospitals on average, the paper said.