Medical Education in China in the Postcultural Revolution Era

Abstract

The Cultural Revolution has had an important impact on Chinese medical education. The Chinese system is engaged in a vigorous program to solve health-manpower needs in the rural areas by emphasizing de-professionalization, mass orientation and accountability to the community. Among the notable changes within the medical schools are the following: an admission process favoring the recruitment of peasants, factory workers, and the military; a three-year program with heavy emphasis on practicing in rural communities; widespread integration of the traditional Chinese and Western systems of medical practice; and manual labor and political seminars, which compose more than 25 per cent of the required curriculum. These innovations have been greatly facilitated by a strong national commitment and supportive political system. The fact that less than 10 per cent of doctors in China today are graduates of college-level medical education indicates the importance of other entry possibilities.

Current perspectives on medical education in China

“…Universities were reopened in 1970, but with ‘worker‐peasant‐soldier’ students being trained as ‘barefoot doctors’, as mentioned above, for the rural population 12 . The emphasis in medical education shifted from the scientific to the practical, 17 and the idea of integrating traditional Chinese medicine with Western medicine was proposed at that time 20,24 …”

“…12 The emphasis in medical education shifted from the scientific to the practical, 17 and the idea of integrating traditional Chinese medicine with Western medicine was proposed at that time. 20,24 After 1977, the restored university curricula looked much like those of the pre-Cultural Revolution period. The post-Cultural Revolution period was characterised by efforts to rebuild the medical education system and to improve its quality.…”

Ecological theories of systems and contextual change in medical education

“…clinical rotations and placements) or when a given context is changing (e.g. merging two teaching hospitals) . The problem is not that contextual change has been ignored in scholarship, but rather that it has been addressed inconsistently and with a lack of common concepts .…”

Development of a medical academic degree system in China

“…The number of students enrolled annually has increased dramatically, rising from 65,695 in 1995 to 149,928 in 2000, and 386,905 in 2005 (6). Meanwhile, China is in the process of transforming its health sector from a situation in which less than 10% of doctors in China were graduates of college level medical education in the early 1970s (7), to a situation in which 64.8% of doctors were graduates of university-level medical education in 2005 (8). Owing to the increased number of graduates with university-level medical education, and increasing social demand for better trained physicians, yearly enrolment into postgraduate medical education increased 6.5-fold from 7,280 in 1998 to 47,412 in 2008 (9).…”