September 10, 2022 marks the 38th Teachers’ Day in China. It is the diligence, hard work and selfless dedication of medical educators generation after generation that enable the compassion, knowledge and skills needed in medicine to be passed on continually. The same is true for PUMCH, which has turned out a large number of excellent doctors and teachers.
PUMCH Mentorship, Like Deep Roots That Underpin Thriving Trees
Physicians that also act as mentors and teachers shoulder greater responsibility, for they are tasked with not only protecting people’s health but also guiding and enlightening their mentees.
Professor Cui Liying, Director of the Department of Neurology who has been working at PUMCH for more than 40 years, still remembers clearly that when she was a resident, every senior doctor in the ward would earnestly help the young doctors revise their medical records. At that time, Professor Yang Yinchang was still an attending physician, and he was always sitting in a corner of the ward office with an English book, always available for junior doctors that came with questions, to whom Prof. Yang was like a “walking dictionary”. In the early 1980s, Professor Tang Xiaofu first put the needles through her own skin, and then everyone else at the EMG department followed suit. This is how they, with their own muscles and nerves, established the normal EMG numbers for Chinese people. Aided by their mentors on such a broad platform as PUMCH, the PUMCHers in the field of clinical neuro-electrophysiology have become a force to be reckoned with internationally.
Academicians Qiu Guixing, Lang Jinghe and Zhao Yupei are highly respected academic heavyweights with students all over the country. A large number of professors, such as Professor Zhang Fengchun from the Department of Rheumatology, Professor Li Hanzhong from the Department of Urology and Professor Cui Liying from the Department of Neurology, are well-known experts in their own field and also teachers who influence the younger generation of PUMCHers today.
The spirit of deeply honored predecessors such as Prof. Zhang Xiaoqian, Prof. Lin Qiaozhi and Prof. Zeng Xianjiu, runs through the medical heavyweights that are still active on the forefront of clinical education, thus the time-honored academic principles and rigorous work style are still properly passed on and carried forward.
PUMCH Teachers, Devoting Themselves to Patients and to the Country
Medical practitioners devote their whole life to the cause. No other profession is more connected with the health and happiness of so many people like medicine.
Recently, the Ministry of Education announced the results of the second batch of “Huang Danian-style Teacher Teams among Chinese University”, and among them is the team of the Department of Internal Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine of Peking Union Medical College led by Prof. Zhang Shuyang.
The Department of Internal Medicine always advocates the compassion that the earlier generations of physicians such as Zhang Xiaoqian, Liu Shihao and Fang Qi harbored towards patients, practices the rigorous and precautious principle of “as if on the brink of an abyss, as if treading on thin ice” for academic research, and holds bedside teaching, teaching-oriented ward rounds and the grand rounds of internal medical to high standards. Thus, they have cultivated generations of excellent teachers who have high professional ethics and are good at teaching.
Professor Zeng Xuejun, Director of the Department of General Internal Medicine, always keeps in mind the words of his mentor, Professor Zhang Naizheng: “Learning without thinking is confusing, thinking without learning is perilous.” Those words make more sense after she became a mentor herself: we should always think and learn more, and then forge ahead with the new knowledge acquired; we should vigorously spot issues and think harder to address them, which then helps us achieve progresses in clinical practices to the real benefits of patients. Through the innovative arrangement of setting up the post of resident team leader, the Department of General Internal Medicine has piloted advanced career training for residents, effectively improving the leadership, clinical teaching ability, professionalism and independent learning ability of senior residents.
In addition to the “ward-based tiered training model”, the Department of Internal Medicine has also developed some distinctive training systems such as the “basic clinical skills teaching aided by standardized patients”, “medical record mentorship - medical record writing for interns”, “afternoon tea with chief resident of internal medicine”, “internal medicine basic clinical skills training”, and “clinical simulation training for critical and intensive care”.
PUMCHers have always been dedicating themselves to the people and to the country. Over the past decades, they have aided Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia; they have been present for emergencies and major events such as aid to Hubei in the fight against COVID-19, the fight against SARS, rescue and relief in earthquakes, the Olympic events, and celebrations on July 1 (the founding of the CPC). Deed is the most powerful form of education. With their actual actions, the teachers and mentors at PUMCH inspire young people generation after generation to grow and become medical practitioners aspiring to protect the health and wellness of people and to eventually take the baton from them.
PUMCH Talent Cultivation, Innovating and Keeping up with the Times
“To the long cycle of doctor training, the teaching system is the key,” said President Zhang Shuyang.
PUMCH keeps optimizing its curriculum system and creates quality teaching materials and courses to improve competency training that ultimately serves the development of students. It aims at cultivating high-caliber and multidisciplinary medical elites that are aligned with the new goals of the Healthy China initiative, can meet people’s new needs in health, adapt to new trends in science and technology and enable PUMCH to stand out in the international competition for talents. The courses of “Palliative Care” and “Clinical Communication Skills” and their teachers have been awarded the honor of “Beijing Demonstrative Course, Teacher and Team for Moral Education” for their pioneering integration of moral education into professional classes. The Department of Radiology has written and published multiple textbooks and teaching reference books on diagnostic radiology to help beginners build a solid and advanced knowledge system of diagnostic radiology. The Department of Diagnostic Ultrasound compiled “Medical Ultrasound Imaging”, which was awarded “Excellent Undergraduate Teaching Materials by Beijing Universities”.
In the new stage of development, building a high-quality education system is the overarching task for education. To that end, PUMCH has launched the clinical postdoctoral program, innovated the progressive and personalized training program, and released the first framework consensus on the core competency of residents to answer the pertinent question of “what kind of medical talents we should cultivate”. The project “Exploration and Practice of ‘8+3’ Competency-based Consistent and Comprehensive Medical Talent Cultivation System” by Prof. Zhang Shuyang’s team won the First Prize of Beijing Higher Education Teaching Achievement.
Over the past six years, the number of students enrolled in the postdoctoral training program and the number of specialties covered by the program have been increasing year by year. Among the trainees, 2 have been awarded the title of “National Top Ten Residents” and 124 “Excellent Residents” at the hospital and department level. This initiative has become an institutional arrangement for the training of national-level high-end medical talents, and a necessary path for clinician training at PUMCH.
Nurtured by advanced teaching philosophy, innovative education model, a vibrant teaching-learning culture and atmosphere, and teachers who lead by words and deeds, young PUMCHers generation after generation have become top talents that excel at both knowledge and skills as well as moral character.
We always cherish what our teachers did for us and remain forever indebted to them. For that we express our most sincere greetings and best wishes to the teachers and strive to write a new chapter of cultivating academically and morally outstanding students in the new era!
Written by: The Publicity Department and the Department of Education
Picture courtesy: Xiao Xiong
Translator: Liu Haiyan
Editor: Wang Yao