Education of health professionals in China

Abstract

With great interest I read Jianlin Hou and colleagues’ Review (Aug 30, p 819). I applaud the initiative of China’s Ministry of Education to provide previously unreleased data on the number of health professional graduates and faculty by school. I respectfully request this information to be made publicly available: improved data can drive research on the quality of schools and their graduates, both in China and worldwide. We recently reported an overview of the world’s medical schools, and identifi ed many challenges associated with counting schools and tracking information at school level. Nevertheless, to help meet the projected demand for health professionals in China, its government must pay attention, not only to the number and capacity of their training institutions, but also to their quality. Hou and colleagues provide observations on the quality of health professional education, but do not comment on the availability of outcome measures, such as government recognition and oversight, licensure and test scores, or process measures, such as qualifications of faculty staff. The absence of standard setting processes, accreditation, and licensing processes poses a real threat to the quality of the educational institutions of health professionals in China. Rigid and static educational methods are prevalent—incorporation of adult learning principles coupled with state-of-the-art assessment and evaluation are urgently needed to bring the education of China’s health professionals into the 21st century. What China needs are health professionals with the knowledge and skills to bring major educational reform and create meaningful and sustainable advances.