Retreat
HKCA is going to organise a Retreat on Sunday 8th January 2023 (9am – 5pm) at Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel to deliberate the direction of the College. A survey was conducted prior to the retreat to collect views from fellows on the focus of the retreat. The following are the topics that will be deliberated at the retreat. If you have not registered yet, please click here to register.
1. International Connection
2. Examinations
3. Well-being
4. Professional Development and Advocacy
5. Workforce
Young Fellows Committee
The Young Fellows Committee (YFC) is going to organise their inaugural event – Webinar on Anaesthesia Across Borders – A Conversation with HKCA Fellows Overseas on 7th January 2023 at 4pm (HK time). The objective of this webinar is to reconnect with those who have relocated overseas as we do miss them. If you want to know how they are doing, please join us by signing up here. For details, please click here for the poster. All fellows and members are welcome!
Webinar on “Prehabilitation: Expanding the Role of Perioperatibve Medicine”
The perioperative webinar on “Prehabilitation: Expanding the role of perioperatibve medicine” will be held on 14th January 2023 (Saturday). This is jointly organised with COC(Anaesthesiology) Hospital Authority which highlights the importance of
- Updated knowledge and evidence on perioperative medicine
- Re-engineering perioperative care pathway: examples of service models and challenges
- Application of CPEX in perioperative risk stratification and prehabilitation
The program will bring you the latest development in preoperative optimisation, shared decision making, prehabilitation and CPEX in high-risk cases. There will be sharing from local and international experts regarding the periop models the major challenges while the service is being setup. The multidisciplinary panels consist of anaesthetists, geriatricians and surgeons from both local and overseas. The overseas experts are:
- Dr Sean McManus,Chair of ANZCA Perioperative Medicine Steering Committee. He established a multidisciplinary perioperative service model in Australia, and also comes up with credentialing and training for perioperative physicians for ANZCA
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Dr Rachel Aitken,a geriatrician from Royal Melbourne Hospital, who is also the Australia Lead for POPS (Perioperative care in Older Patients undergoing Surgery) and TOPS (Trauma in Older Persons Service)
Please click here for registration which will open till 30th December 2022.
Research Grant for Well-being
The College is proud to announce that we have successfully received a research grant from Medical Protection Society (MPS) foundation for evaluating the implementation of well-being measures for our members and fellows. Ever since the establishment of the welfare committee 2 years ago, our group of advocates have been actively seeking for measures that can help promote resilience and enhance well-being for anaesthesiologists practicing in Hong Kong. Through surveys and workshops, we have realised that the issue of stress and burnout is prevalent not only amongst fellows and trainees in the public sector, but also those working in private. We hope the research project will help us shed light on whether a hybrid approach to positive psychology interventions, through a web-based platform, can have an effect on well-being amongst our trainees and fellows.
Obituary – Dr Victor Yeo
Dr Victor Yeo, (1964 – 2022)
FRCA, MRCP, FANZCA, FHKCA (Anaes), FFICANZCA, FHKCA (IC), FJFICM
My brother, Victor, passed away on 22nd September 2022, having succumbed to metastatic renal cell carcinoma. He was 57 years old.
Victor was born in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) in 1964. Our family left Burma for Hong Kong when he was 5 years old. He studied at La Salle Primary School and La Salle College, before pursuing his education in United Kingdom. He attended St Joseph College, Ipswich and subsequently gained entrance to study Medicine at Magdalene College, Cambridge and later obtained a scholarship to continue his Clinical Medicine years at Hughes Hall, Cambridge.
He began his training in Anaesthesia at Leicester Royal Infirmary UK and rotated among teaching hospitals in Leicester and Sheffield. He side branched into Neonatology and Paediatrics for a year, and also ventured across the Altantic to work in the USA briefly to challenge himself. After obtaining his Fellowship in Anaesthesia and Membership in Paediatrics in UK, he returned to Hong Kong in 1996 and began working at the Prince of Wales Hospital. On completing his anaesthetic training under the ANZCA and HKCA programmes, he decided to pursue a career in Intensive Care Medicine. He obtained his ICM Fellowship under both Colleges too, and moved on to Queen Mary Hospital Hong Kong in 2000. Besides clinical duties, his other passion was teaching. He was an instructor for the ATLS course and an examiner for the College exams.
Victor left the public health sector to work in private practice in 2010. During his career, he treated many patients but the most memorable would be the survivors from the Pak Sin Leng Wildfire in 1996, and also the SARS patients in 2003.
I never asked my brother why he chose Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine. It was well known to all his friends that Victor loved reading and indeed enjoyed studying. It was no surprise that he would choose the most demanding field which would cover all specialties in Medicine, and that he would treat the sickest patients in the hospitals.
Having Victor as my brother was a special blessing. He would use the knowledge he learnt from physiology and applied to daily life. When I was sitting for my undergraduate exams, he advised me to avoid heavy meals before exam (to maintain cerebral blood flow), and the advantage of taking candies (the most direct substrate for the neurones). And being a fan of “Star Wars” and the Jedi Order, he would wish me luck saying “May the Force be with you”. When we were both anaesthetic trainees, we could discuss our work and our “dilemmas”. And in scenarios where we had to decide whether to intubate the patients or not, he would say: “if in doubt, put the tube down”, a principle which I still abide. We could discuss our post-operative analgesic regime or how to improve the success rate of our epidural anaesthesia. He would always give you his honest and fair view.
My father told me Victor used to draw pictures of horses all day long when he was young. However, I never saw him drew. In his teen years, his favourite pastimes were making models, playing board games and computer war-gaming. He would made models of tanks, fighters, warships and battlefields which were based on real historic backgrounds and along these activities, he became an expert in world history, especially the World War II. Reading was his favourite hobby and Kindle his best gadget. And he would prefer swimming to any other sports. Regarding his musical talent, one must agree his singing of “Bla Bla Black Sheep”, the only song he would sing every time on requests, was admirable.
When he was undergoing cancer treatment, Victor experienced many many side effects. We were distraught and devastated, but Victor was the one to comfort us. He remained his normal calm and intellectual self, balancing the benefits and side effects of all the novel treatments he underwent, and analysing his progress as the disease unfold. Finally. it was the courage he showed in his fight against the disease, the sufferings he chose to endure silently, and the selfless love he showed to his family, that made him such a remarkable man.
Victor was survived by his wife Alice, and his two children, Victoria and Horatio, his parents and three sisters.
Dr Patricia Yeo
Anaesthetist (Private Practice, Hong Kong)
Congregation and Honorary Fellows
The 35th Congregation was held on 19th November 2022. Dr Hing-yu So, the President of the HKCA, delivered an inspiring opening address, which can be found on College’s website, at the congregation. Congregation is one of the biggest and joyful events of the College.
Occasionally, HKCA admits distinguished persons who have made a notable contribution to the advancement of anaesthesiology or pain medicine or the College. This year, Professor Davy Cheng was admitted as Honorary Fellows of the HKCA.
In 2020, three honorary fellows, who are Dr Meredith Craigie, Dr Rodney Mitchell and Dr Brendan Moore, were elected. However, they were unable to physically receive the fellowship due to the pandemic until this year. At the congregation this year, we are pleased to present the honorary fellowship to Dr Meredith Craigie and Dr Rodney Mitchell. The citations of Professor Cheng, Dr Craigie and Dr Mitchell can be found here.
For more delightful photos, please visit the Photo Gallery in Members Area.
Examiners Workshop
After nearly a year’s preparations, an Examiners Workshop was held on Sunday 30th October 2022. The Workshop comprised pre-workshop tasks including assignment, lectures and reading materials and post-workshop assignment. During the workshop, participants were given introduction of the standard setting of examination, and had group discussion on the assignments. Guest instructors were invited to share their illuminating insights on examining. Being examiner is a mammoth undertaking, the College is grateful for having many enthusiastic examiners who have passion in examination. 
The College expressed their gratitude to the workshop coordinators including Dr Albert Chan, Dr Mandy Chu, Dr Kin-fai Khu, Dr Carmen Lam, Dr Desmond Lam, Dr Hing-yu So, and guest instructors including Dr Simon Chan, Prof Matthew Chan, Dr SK Ng and Dr Tsun-woon Lee for their contribution, in particular Dr Henry Wong for playing his major leadership role in this workshop.
ASM 2022 – Note of Gratitude and Photos
What a joy it is to organise ASM! This is the third year we hold the major annual event in a hybrid format. I want to thank Dr So, Dr Chee, my supervisors, the ASM organising committee, as well as many other coordinators that are involved. I wished the speakers and participants enjoyed the sharing and discussions as much as I did.
The theme of ASM 2022 is ‘Exploring the Unknown’. I would take the opportunity to reflect on evidence-based and informed practice we are in today. Two main concepts in need of our continual learning and effort.
First, I want to draw your attention to the application of evidence into practice and its translation into patient-centred outcomes.
Core steps of evidence-based practice include: (1) formulating a clinical question, (2) searching the literature (3) critically appraising the evidence, (4) integrating it, and (5) evaluating outcomes. As we take up our responsibility as a profession, we are held accountable to apply the best available evidence to inform our clinical decision making. Effective and consistent application of evidence-based practice helps us to deliver the best care to our patients. Yet often we encounter difficulties that inhibit our application. That’s when evidence-informed practice comes into play when we have to give attention to other forms of evidence, such as the clinical context, patient values and preferences, and our own clinical knowledge and experiences. We are reminded to be vigilant while remaining flexible enough to meet the continually changing needs, conditions, and preferences of patients.
Second, we need to “up our game.” We need to be up-to-date enough to respond quickly to a fast-changing medical landscape, and we need to be innovative.
Our present role of anaesthesiology extends beyond the operating theatre to provide expertise in Intensive Care Medicine, Pain Medicine, Perioperative Medicine, ambulatory anaesthesia and office based anaesthesia.
We, anaesthesiologists, embrace the opportunities presented by the broader role of the perioperative physicians taking care of multiple aspects of the ‘non-operative’ care of the patient undergoing major surgery. On the flip side, the full scope of the role of perioperative physicians is not currently covered by any single academic body or college. Obstacles are inevitable, yet in the right perspective, they might become opportunities to coordinate integrated cross-specialty training and certification.
New drugs with more favourable pharmacological properties are made available.
New parameters and trends for depth of anesthesia, BP prediction and nociception monitoring might adjust our traditional way of anaesthetic administration.
The application of big data lets us drill into the ocean of multinational, computationally complex, resource intensive information that creates large, collaborative anaesthesia data sets.
The use of artificial intelligence and its “disruptive innovation” is anticipated to be met with criticism and obstacles at both the user and administrative level.
It is important to understand and acknowledge our own wellbeing in the workplace, especially when we are presented with stressful and unique challenges in the era of COVID-19.
There is much to do as we get ever closer to our commitment of evidence-based practice in anaesthesiology and staying up-to-date as a profession. All of these can happen only if we maintain a learning mindset, be curious, and adopt a cooperative attitude. It might be too much to yearn for an encyclopedic knowledge in anaesthesiology, but we are always reminded to adopt an open mind and behaviour of a humble, prudent, and caring anaesthesiologist.
Steering into the unknown of organising ASM is like running a marathon, blindfolded. Now I understand if you get the people that support you, you can do anything.
Dr. Gerund Cheung
Chairman of Organising Committee, ASM 2022
Photos of the ASM 2022 have been uploaded to here.
IACA Annual Updates
2022 has been a fruitful year for the International Academy of Colleges of Anaesthesiologists (IACA), in which HKCA is one of the founding Colleges. Webinars on Environmental Sustainability, and Opioid Regulation were organised which engaged hundreds of participants worldwide. Thank you to those who participated in the webinars. To get to know what IACA have done in 2022, the IACA annual update can be found here. 
IACA webinar on Opioid Regulation – an International Perspective, which was hosted by HKCA, was held on 28th September 2022. The speakers and panellists discussed a broad range of topics surrounding opioid prescription and regulation in their respective countries. Highlights included discussion around relationships with pharmaceutical companies, observations made after the introduction of tighter restrictions on codeine, and proposed development of new regulatory frameworks. 
This webinar was chaired by Dr Timmy Chan and featured keynote speakers Professor Chi-Wai Cheung and Dr Andrew Purcell. The event concluded with a lively expert panel discussion and Q&A session.
British Journal of Anaesthesia (BJA) Retreat and AGM 2022
BJA meeting is one of the regular overseas events that the President of HKCA participates in. Since western countries have opened their boarders, face-to-face events have resumed and BJA meeting is one of those. Dr Hing-yu So, the President of HKCA, attended the BJA Retreat and AGM in Salzburg Austria on 20-22 September 2022. After enjoying a bit of fresh air in Salzburg, Dr So had to be quarantined in hotel for 7 days in return.
ANZCA ASM 2023
ANZCA is going to organise their ASM on 5th – 9th May 2023 in Sydney. The theme for the ASM is “Be connected”, and after the tough times of the past few years it could not be more apt.
