[Wuxi Daily Jun. 18th] In China, only 1/6 students graduating from medical school choose to be a teacher while more than half of them pursue non-medical jobs. This phenomenon has aroused a social concern: What happens to Education of Medical Science?
Recently, Wuxi Medical School (WXMS) of Jiangnan University (JU) started the first nationwide enrollment. According to its latest released Enrollment Guide, this year’s enrollment will be set as one class with 30 students, majoring in clinical medicine. Wu Zhengguo, JU Associate President and Secretary of Party Committee of Wuxi Medical School, says that comparing Schools of Medical Science of other universities, its talent-cultivating method -- “Smaller Scale but Higher Quality” may be its biggest advantage. Through an interview by Wuxi Daily report, the reporters have concluded that Wuxi Medical School may put forward the best solution to the “embarrassing situation” of China’s medical education.
The necessity and urgency to take an “elite cultivation” way
“It is necessary and urgent to take an ‘elite cultivation’ way”, said Wu Zhengguo. The general development higher education tends to transit its emphasis on from elite education to mass education. However, the medical education should be treated as a kind of elite education. “Medical Science studies life and life is the most important thing, so it should be treated seriously.”
In fact, pursuing elite education is the founding concept of WXMS of JU. To organize Wuxi Medical School, JU had organized a demonstration meeting, at which Li Liming, the secretary of party committee of Peking Union Medical College said that it is not the best way to improve the quality of clinical medicine by enlarging the enrollment size – a concept to “cultivate one talent out of one thousand”. Taking Peking Union Medical College’s training mode as an example, in spite of being regarded as the most desired medical school, its enrollment is controlled within 90.
“I’m very lucky to study in Wuxi Medical School,” said Chen Yuxiao, a WXMS Junior and also one of the first batch medical students. Two years ago, without being listed in the national college enrollment plan, WXMS selected 30 students from the enrolled students of JU that year. Without a teaching building and an affiliated hospital at that time, the 30 students were sent to Medical College of Soochow University to study as exchange students.
Chen Yuxiao says, advantages of small-class-education are quite obvious. When having the anatomy course, everyone in his class can have the chance to practice, while students of Medical School of Soochow University only observe the specimen or video in order to protect the body used for teaching because Soochow University has up to 150 the-same-year students.
In the last two years, these JU medical students all have got excellent marks and 100% of them have passed CET 4 while 40% passing CET 6. In addition, the students have won some provincial or ministerial level awards based on two scientific research programs.
Persisting in an upscale talent-cultivation strategy to promote the connotation construction
Having gone through an expansion of enrollment, China’s higher education, especially medical education needs connotation construction and quality construction urgently.
As for teaching method, WXMS adopts a method of “one student with two supervisors” because of the small student number but remarkable academic background of the students. Under that kind of student-centered cultivation method, every student has one teacher to lead their research and another teacher help them with clinical practice during the whole process of their study. Feng Lei, the leading teacher of the first-year medical class told us, every 5 to 6 students have formed a small research group joining in their supervisor’s team and they will receive these supervisors’ face-to-face direction. “Higher teaching quality depends on frequent communication between students and teachers.”
“A good doctor requires not only professional knowledge and exquisite skills, but also communication techniques. Meanwhile, a strong sense of humanism.” said Zhang Haifeng, the deputy secretary of party community of Wuxi Medical School. We put the humane spirit throughout teaching to better the students’ sense for humanity. For instance, starting with a “speechless body” ceremony, the first anatomy course helps students get rid of their fears and set the idea of “speechless bodies are all their teachers” , advocating the medical spirit for contribution.
Persisting in an upscale talent introducing strategy to guarantee the quality of teaching group
Since two years ago, Wuxi Medical School has been attracting talents from all over the world. Statistics shows that WXMS has introduced 20 high level talents for teaching. 12 of them have abroad studying experiences, 8 of them get their doctoral degree abroad and 17 of them are associate professors or above.
Nowadays, WXMS has one “National One Thousand Talents Project” winner, one “Provincial Six Peaks Talents” winner and more than 20 winners of “Provincial 333 Talent project “, etc.
To build a “think tank” for WXMS, Wuxi government and JU are generous in investment. Wuxi government provides with 0.15 billion for talents introduction, while JU also offers every talent introduced preferential treatments such as housing subsidy from 1to 6 million yuan, family settling allowance from 0.5 to 1 million yuan and hundreds of thousands yuan research starting funding.
Medical Science needs a lifelong study.
“Knowledge is boundless.” Students majoring in medical science should spend more time than other major students.” said Feng Lei. As far as he knows, among the first batch of 30 students, only 2 want to return to their hometown after graduation, the rest would choose to continue studying for a master’s degree. In fact, hospitals tend to recruit higher degree students and some of the important departments of hospitals even set a recruitment standard requiring students with a doctoral degree.
“The medical education cultivates only qualified medical graduates other than qualified doctors. Lack of after-graduation medical education results in students’ incompetence of clinical abilities.” Wu Chundong, Director of the Education Office of Wuxi Hospital, believes that after-graduation education is essential to cultivate good doctors.
At the beginning of this year, nationwide clinical doctors’ standardized training system started on trail. Actually, as early as 2007, to practice a two-stage clinical doctors’ standardized training system, those main hospitals of Wuxi require the new-coming medical students to go different departments of the hospital to practice their clinical skills (undergraduates required to go through a 5-year-long training and graduates a 4-year-long training). Quite a few hospitals even set a regulation that students without passing the evaluations may be dismissed.
“Medical Job is a career requiring lifelong study.” said Wei Bingbing, a doctor of urology department of Wuxi People’s Hospital. He looks quite calm after 7 years studying at school and 4 years training. If passing the evaluation this weekend, he would finish the 4 years training. He said that the standardized training system is a process to help students grasp knowledge from “book” to “practice”. While studying knowledge at school, they can practice clinical skills through standardized training. “To tell the truth, as medical science is changing with the passing days, we should keep on studying after all these training as well.”
According to medical professionals, it is the only way to cultivate elite doctors by dividing medical education into school education, after-graduation education and continuing education for building a systematical medical education chain from school education to lifelong education.
