Comment on: Zhang Z, . Focus on China: should clinicians engage in research? and lessons from other countries. Quant Imaging Med Surg 2014;4:413-25

Recently there has been a passionate debate about whether clinicians in China should engage in research (1-3). However, some of the discussions are theoretical, and there was not much reference to the current models in other developed regions, such as Western European countries, USA, and Japan. In Hong Kong, the majority of doctors employed by the Hospital Authority and the doctors in private practice do not do research, while clinical research is mainly conducted by the small percentage of physician scientists employed by the two medical schools (4).