Having served in the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs as a medical officer for 18 years, he took up private practice in Hong Kong from 1883 to 1889.

Chinese society at the time was not quite ready for western medicine; as a result, many of the college's medical graduates had difficulty finding employment.

[citation needed] The establishment of the Queen Mary Hospital in 1937 brought the faculty a major clinical teaching and research base.

[citation needed] However, the Japanese occupation of the city during the Second World War disrupted teaching, and many staff and students were imprisoned.

[citation needed] Following the end of the war, it reopened and soon became an important training centre of clinicians in the city, with many departments and schools in healthcare and medical sciences opened.

In July 2024, HKUMed revealed plans to establish a graduate medical programme, which would cover the content of the normal six-year undergraduate curriculum within a study period of four years.

[10] The announcement is seen as efforts to compete for talent,[10][11] and had followed news a few days earlier that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology was in talks with Imperial College London about establishing and jointly operating the city's third medical school, which would also admit students with an undergraduate degree.

The School of Clinical Medicine further consists of 14 departments, as of August 2024[update]:[14]During the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, the faculty's dean, Lam Shiu-kum, publicly criticised the Prince of Wales Hospital (PWH) and its associated medical school (under the Chinese University of Hong Kong) for their alleged poor handling of the outbreak.

As PWH was at the centre of the outbreak, Lam wrote in a letter to the South China Morning Post (SCMP):[15][16] "Why was the index of suspicion so low in Hong Kong, the acuity of judgment so raw, the sense of infection control so weak and the mechanism for instituting isolation so rusty?

They wrote that they found it "objectionable and distressing to be subjected to such accusations" and that such criticisms had been "very damaging to the morale of the frontline staff" at the hospital, adding that they had been under extreme stress for more than four weeks.

[15][16] Lo Wing-lok, president of the Hong Kong Medical Association, said that "this type of mud-slinging was unhelpful" and that "we did not have the benefit of hindsight when we were facing this catastrophe".

[17] Both attributed the criticisms to the long-standing rivalry between the two medical schools and their teaching hospitals, and called for solidarity and collaboration.

[20] In March amid the investigation, the faculty's dean, Lam Shiu-kum, abruptly resigned, citing "personal reasons".