On May 25, 2016, PUMCH held a meeting at its Lecture Hall to start its post-doctoral program for clinical medicine. The program, approved in March by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and supported by the Ministry and the National Health and Family Planning Commission, marks an important step of the hospital in restoring its small-scale “medical elite” education and creating a high-end personnel  education mode that both fits Chinese conditions and meets international standards.

The recruitment of first-batch post-doctoral candidates was completed in April. 56 clinical medicine doctoral graduates were selected out from applicants from across the country to receive on May 26, 27 written tests in English and medical knowledge and two rounds of interviews at department and hospital levels. 15 of them will ultimately become the first batch of post-doctoral students of the hospital. They will enter station in the coming August to complete three-year comprehensive training that is highly intensive and demanding.

The program is unlike the current standardized residency education or traditional post-doctoral programs focused on research. In the principle of “high threshold, top teaching and strict graduation” and aiming at producing “elites”, the program selects talents each year from eight-year clinical medicine graduates and doctoral graduates and formulates personalized education plans for them using the PUMCH platform. It centers on clinical training and does not lose sight on teaching and research capability. This is a much enhanced program in terms of training aims, system designing, training intensity and quality, and aims at producing multidisciplinary medical personnel with international vision through three-year highly intensive training in medicine, teaching and research. Teacher training will be done at the same time to provide excellent teachers for the nation’s standardized residency education.

To ensure success of the program, the hospital puts in very much in the arrangement of advisor teams, rotation training, training abroad, daily life facilities and benefits. Each post-doctoral student will have his/her own advisor team, selected out from academicians, directors of branches of the Chinese Medical Association and academic leaders. Each advisor team will consist of 3-5 persons, covering medicine, teaching and research, and a one-to-one tutor will be appointed to guide the student through the three-year course. A student will receive spiral rotation training connected with world-class residency education programs, as well as intensified training in clinical thinking and evidence-based medicine. A student in surgery will have more opportunities for operations and a non-surgery student will gradually improve his/her ability as a team leader. In research training, a student will receive all-English CTSI online training and critical reading of literature, a cooperation between PUMCH and UCLA. A student will also have priority in opportunities of acting as chief resident, entering a department, participating in programs abroad and applying for post-doctoral fund of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. Apart from all benefits granted to a PUMCH resident of the same seniority, a student will also enjoy post-doctoral subsidy, apartment accommodation and fitness facilities.