Communicating health in Hong Kong
by
Michele Nardelli
People still come to the Matilda International Hospital in Hong
Kong looking for a special tree. The hospital has a wonderful 100 year history,
not the least of which is that it was the setting for the Hollywood blockbuster
Love is a Many Splendoured Thing. Movie buffs still hope to find the blossom
tree on the hill in the grounds of the hospital (long gone I am afraid) where
the lovers in the film made their tryst.
When UK trained midwife Linda Burgoyne came to Hong Kong it was only ever meant to be for a few weeks on her way back home to England. That was in 1991. But the Matilda International Hospital and the city of Hong Kong somehow got under her skin.
“I had travelled quite a bit with my work – just before coming here I had been nursing in Dubai, but I never really intended to stay in Hong Kong,” Burgoyne said. “And at that stage I hadn’t thought I would make a fundamental shift in my career either.”
Burgoyne worked at Matilda when she first arrived in Hong Kong and then left the hospital to run a doctor’s clinic. In the meantime she was one of the first students to enrol in UniSA’s Masters in Communication run in Hong Kong through the Australia Pacific Management Institute.
“I realised that communication was a huge emerging management issue in the medical and health industry because it is not where most of the players’ expertise lies.
“Not only are there differences between the doctors’ and nurses’ perceptions of the health industry, but there is a huge gap between their goals and those of the financial managers.
And it was that challenge – getting doctors and nurses to understand the economic factors of running a hospital and the accountants to see where the medical staff were coming from – that became a focus for Burgoyne when she returned to Matilda International Hospital as Executive Director of Communications and Clinical Operations.
Matilda International Hospital was founded as a maternity facility by a bequest from Granville Sharp to honour the memory of his wife Matilda Lincolne. The pair arrived in Hong Kong in 1858 facing everything from shipwreck and typhoon to plague and piracy. Sharp eventually made a good fist of a commercial career while his intrepid wife spent her life dedicated to helping the poor and sick. When Sharp died he left a bequest to Hong Kong to build a hospital in her name dedicated “not to the medical profession... but for the benefit, care and happiness of the patient.”
With that quote at the heart of the hospital’s foundation – making a profit was not really on the agenda for many years. But by the end of the 20th century it was clear that for Matilda to survive and fulfil its promise to patient care, it needed to communicate and diversify.
Today Burgoyne is overseeing communications for what is considered Hong Kong’s top maternity hospital but also a centre for executive health, paediatric care, surgery and allied health services. It is a communications challenge she relishes.