© Hong Kong Academy of Medicine. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
DOCTOR FOR SOCIETY
An interview with Dr Anne Kwan
Janus Wong, Andrew Seto
Year 5, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong
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An accomplished anaesthetist, Dr Anne Kwan,
has devoted her time to serving patients in Hong
Kong and China for over 20 years. She received her
specialist training in Australia and later worked in
the UK, before returning to Hong Kong in 1992.
Since then, she has devoted 18 years of service
to the public sector and served as the Chief of
Service of Anaesthesiology and Pain Medicine at
the United Christian Hospital (UCH) until 2011.
She is now the medical superintendent of Evangel
Hospital.
Dr Kwan’s love for charity work dates back
to 20 years ago, when she first teamed up with
several plastic surgeons to provide free cleft lip
and palate surgery in Mainland China. She noticed
that children with cleft palate were often sent to
orphanages and received fewer education and
economic opportunities. Over the past two decades,
she has visited more than 20 Mainland hospitals and
extended anaesthetic care to remote parts of China.
The vast majority of her patients are children with
cleft lip and palate, and thanks to Dr Kwan and her
colleagues, they are able to return to normal life with
a new smile.
Dr Kwan has a soft spot for children with cleft
lip and palate. “Anaesthetising infants with difficult
airway anatomy requires specialised skill,” Dr Kwan
remarks, citing the technical challenge as one of the
aspects of her work in which she takes pride and
finds fulfilment. It was during her work with Dr
Edward H Peterson, the first medical superintendent
of UCH, that she acquired extensive experience in
intubation of children with difficult airways.
With her special interest and expertise in
this area, Dr Kwan also extends this service to the
Evangel Hospital. As medical superintendent of
Evangel Hospital, she also spearheads a number of
charity projects, such as providing dental services to
the mentally handicapped, conducting workshops to
curb youth substance abuse, carrying out outreach
programmes in elderly homes, and working with
social workers and local churches to finance first
doctor encounters for the reluctant elderly.
Despite her expertise and experience, working
in China has not always been easy. Dr Kwan
vividly recalls the challenges she faced as the first
Hong Kong anaesthetist to volunteer at Sichuan
immediately after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
Most of the patients under her care at West China
Hospital suffered from multiple, technically
demanding fractures with massive blood loss. The
race against time was not made easy by the large
number of patients, limited number of experienced
local doctors, and the Sichuan dialect which
made professional communication in Putonghua
challenging.
Why is Dr Kwan so passionate about patient
care? She herself has a story to tell. Back in her days
as a houseman in Australia, she fell victim to a gas
leak in her apartment and suffered burns over 25%
of her body. She was hospitalised for a month at the
burns unit, where she made remarkable recovery
thanks to the technical skills and compassion of her
doctors. She recounts her heartfelt gratitude towards
the team of plastic surgeons tending to her, and
believes that patients can really tell if their doctors
gave the treatment their best. “Doctors really make a
difference to people’s lives,” Dr Kwan summarises.
In addition to the technical aspects of
anaesthesiology, Dr Kwan is also attracted to the
human side of medicine. She finds her work as an
anaesthetist immensely satisfying, and describes
passionately how she looks forward to waking
her patients after each operation to reassure them
that they are safe and well. Her training in pain
management gives her ample opportunity to relieve
the pain and suffering of patients inflicted with
cancer and chronic painful conditions, and to bring
them comfort and dignity.
In Dr Kwan’s eyes, being a doctor is a privilege
and a commitment, as few occupations bring
as much respect and satisfaction. She remarks
that being a doctor in Hong Kong is still a highly
respectable profession, and challenges one to
uphold the exemplary standard of medical care and
ethics.