Yuan Yuan | December 26

Beijing Review - General practitioners are considered key to improving public medical services

Du Xueping, Director of the Yuetan Community Healthcare Center in downtown Beijing's Xicheng District, has been involved in China's general practitioner (GP) trial program since it began.

As an important part of the country's medical reform, the introduction of a national GP system has been planned for almost 20 years. The Yuetan center is one of the first clinics in the country to trial the system.

"The trial program started in this center in 1994 and I came here in 1995," said Du, who used to be a cardiovascular specialist at Beijing's prestigious Fuxing Hospital.

"At the time, people didn't understand why I gave up a job in a big hospital to work in a small community center," Du said. "Even now, few people would choose to work in a community healthcare center. But based on my experience, community healthcare centers are actually more important for people's health than big hospitals."

...

General Practice in China

General practice was adopted in China in the 1990s. At present, there are roughly 130,000 GPs in the country, mainly in big and medium-sized cities.

In June 2010 an executive meeting of the State Council decided that China will establish a national system of general practitioners.

A statement of the meeting lists principles for establishing the new system to ensure the quality of GPs, with a focus on improving their capabilities in clinical practice, standardizing the criteria for training GPs and creating strict requirements for doctors who wish to apply for GP certification.

China will work to ensure that for every 10,000 urban or rural residents, there will be two to three qualified general practitioners ready to take care of their health problems. Based on this standard, by 2020, China will have 300,000 GPs.

In this case, "qualified" is defined as having completed a five-year bachelor's degree program in clinical medicine and three years of specialized medical education before becoming a general practitioner, the statement says.