Yu Ying wants her journey south to Hong Kong to be "as fruitful" as Xuan Zang's legendary trek west to India.

The venerable monk in the Tang Dynasty (AD618-907) brought home many much-needed Buddhist scriptures.

Likewise, Yu, a 31-year-old nurse from the intensive care unit (ICU) of Guangzhou's First People's Hospital, expects to bring home Hong Kong's holistic approach to nursing, which she will share with her colleagues in Guangzhou.

Yu, who arrived in Hong Kong earlier this month, was one of the 122 nurses from Guangdong to start a training program in Hong Kong's public hospitals last Monday.

The 122 trainees from 71 hospitals in Guangdong were selected from 280 applicants in March.

Yu will be trained at Tuen Mun Hospital for 10 months.

The scheme is the result of a four-year deal between Hong Kong's Hospital Authority (HA) and Guangdong's health department. The agreement was reached in May.

Under the deal, the HA will provide professional training in 10 departments to Guangdong nurses. The program will run through 2010.

This year the HA will provide ICU training in orthopedics and surgery to four groups of nurses.

"The program will help me experience the nursing culture in Hong Kong, which is quite different from what we have on the mainland," Yu, an ICU nurse with 14 years' experience, told China Daily.

Yu added that mainland nurses would simply finish the jobs assigned to them and then move on.

Yu, who got her nursing degree from the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong in 2005, said she had learnt that the physical and mental needs of patients are equally important.

Hospitals in Guangzhou recently introduced the concept of looking after patients' mental heath, but "they are not doing it thoroughly enough," she said.

For Yu, the program is more than a chance to polish her professional skills. She sees it as her mission to introduce the holistic approach to nursing to her colleagues back home, she said.

"When I finish the program, I want to share with Guangdong nurses how to take better care of patients," she said.

She added that learning and living in Hong Kong were a new experience, and that she was grateful the HA had given her all the support she needed.

Yu said for many of her classmates, especially those from the more remote parts of Guangdong, Hong Kong's training system is unique.

"They have been writing out lists of what they have to remember in Hong Kong, such as always standing on the right hand side on an elevator," she said.

However, she said her biggest challenge was using English, the language in which most of the course materials are written.

Yu said that before coming Hong Kong, she and her classmates had attended a one-month intensive English training course in Guangzhou.

She added that she hoped to be appointed a professional nurse in Guangzhou after the training.

HA's chief manager (Nursing) Susie Lum, who is also chief supervisor of the program, said: "Professional nursing training in Hong Kong has an international standard. It is time for us to take on a training role for mainland nurses."

(China Daily July 31, 2007)