Standardized residency training in China: the new internal medicine curriculum

• DOI: 10.1007/s40037-017-0378-5
• Publication Date: 2017-11-02T09:31:13Z
• Authors: Jonathan Lio; Yanqing Ye; Hongmei Dong; Shalini Reddy; John McConville; Renslow Sherer
• Keywords: China; Education, Medical, Graduate; 4. Education; Internal Medicine; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; Humans; Internship and Residency; 02 engineering and technology; Eye-Opener; Reference Standards; 3. Good health

China formally established a system of national standardized medical residency training in 2014, which affects the health of its 1.4 billion people. Accompanying this system were new guidelines and standards for internal medicine residency training. However, the majority of the standards focused on process measurements, such as minimum case requirements of diseases and procedural skills, rather than describing broader physician competencies in the domains of professionalism, patient care, communication, teamwork, quality improvement, and scholarship. While China has taken a large step forward with standardization of certain aspects of internal medicine residency training, the next step should focus on outcome measures and creating a system that is competency-based.