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.