Medical schools in China: outdated and unpopular

Some insider views of the Chinese medical education system have been published as part of The Lancet special China-themed issue this week. The rather gloomy conclusion is that China’s vast medical education system is failing to attract good students and failing to produce graduates who are able and willing to work as doctors.

Medical education reforms

A review article notes that China made some major reforms to medical education in 1998, greatly expanding the number of students to produce half a million would-be doctors a year. However, many of these medical graduates do not enter medicine but take up other careers. Why is this? The review authors say there “is a mismatch of health professional education and employment opportunities”.

Another article in the same issue of the Lancet throws further light on the lack of enthusiasm for medicine as a career: Dr Yang Pengfei of the Changhai Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, says most doctors now advise their children against taking up a career in medicine and only 7% would recommend it. He cites the breakdown in trust and respect between patients and doctors and the tide of violence against medical staff – 30 killings in recent years by disgruntled patients and their families. Dr Yang notes that even the best medical schools such as Peking Union Medical College are now struggling to attract high quality students.

“The national admission score for a graduate student majoring in medicine has also declined for three consecutive years, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education. It is no longer the best students who go to medical school. This is a growing concern: who will be tomorrow’s doctors?” he asks.

Poor relations between patients and doctors

The review article says the problem of poor relations between patients and doctors is due in part to the narrow and inflexible education system that fails to instil students with the values, ethos, and ethics of the medical profession and also fails to produce doctors with good communication skills and characteristics such as empathy.

“The curriculum system still focuses narrowly on biomedicine, medical technology, and clinical practice. Pedagogic methods are rigid: mostly teacher-controlled didactic lecturing, which requires rote memorisation by students. The increase of disputes between doctors and patients, and violence against doctors in China might be associated with these deficiencies in education,” it says.

Another problem with medical education in China is that it is still rigidly hospital focused and geared towards producing narrow specialists rather than generalists who can work in the community or in rural health.

“Therefore, it is not surprising that the graduates have limited knowledge about primary care services and prevention of diseases.”

Will things improve in the near future? It’s hard to see how, as huge class sizes are a barrier to more innovative teaching methods such as problem-based learning, and encouraging interaction and discussion.

China’s medical schools may need to take a leaf from the book of China’s factories. Instead of mass producing unpopular low quality products they could adapt the best foreign know-how and methods through joint ventures to produce a wider range of higher quality sought-after products.