Zhao Yupei, President of Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and his leadership staff hosted Lincoln Chen and CMB Beijing staff on March 10 to review mutual interests in medical education reform. Senior representatives of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) also joined the discussion which devoted particular attention to clinical residency training. Clinical residency training was first introduced in China at PUMC Hospital in the 1920s, and the challenge of more effective, standardized, and accredited residency training has gained renewed attention since China launched comprehensive health reforms in 2009.

NHFPC’s recently issued publication, China’s Standardized Medical Residency Training System Development Report 2014, outlines the history, establishment and implementation, and prospects for standardized reform of residency training. In 2013, Guidelines on Establishing Standardized Medical Residency Training System were jointly issued by seven administrative sectors and set a target for all practitioners to have residency training by 2020. Now the challenge for government and medical universities is to achieve that target through sound systems of enrollment, entry requirements, training, models, evaluation and assessment, and certification.

NHFPC has designated 559 hospitals, including PUMC Hospital, as training bases in 36 specialty fields, and President Zhao has been designated chair of a new postgraduate medical education board.