Introduction
The global outbreak of COVID-19 has brought the unprecedented burden to
the healthcare system all round the world. The COVID-19 pandemic
underscored the severe deficit of medical resources, in which the
shortage of medical personnel is more striking. Therefore, it forced us
to rethink of the running medical education system and its future. In
recent decades, Chinese government has never stopped the actions in
optimizing the medical education system to adapt the rapidly growing
healthcare demand [1]. In this article, we summarized the situation
of the medical education system nowadays in China and analyzed the
developing direction for the future.
In order to meet the demand for high-quality medical personnel in
China’s healthcare, the reform of medical education in China has gone
through several epoch-making stages, including the merge of independent
medical schools into comprehensive universities in 1998
[2]; the establishment of the
accreditation system for clinical medical specialties in 2008 [3];
the initiation of the standardized residency training system in 2013
[2]; the accreditation by the World Federation of China’s clinical
medicine program in 2020; and the medical education development in China
entered a new era with the release of the ”Healthy China 2030 Planning
Outline ” put the people’s healthcare issues to a national strategic
level [4].
The fight against COVID-19 has directly tested
the medical education system
worldwide [5]. The noble spirit and superior medical skills shown by
the medical staff in times of crisis highlighted the success of medical
personnel training in China. However, while huge progress has been made
in medical education, it is also clear that medical personnel will need
to acquire more comprehensive capabilities in the future, such as
multidisciplinary integration and crisis response skills. In the context
of COVID-19 and the Health China strategy, we should objectively examine
the problems faced by medical education system in China. We also have to
consider the developing direction of medical education in China by
referencing the models of other medical education systems from a
longer-term perspective.