In the past ten years, PUMCH, in keeping with its original aspiration of cultivating talents for the country, has built an ever larger and structurally optimized talent base subject to more scientific evaluation. The hospital now has the presidents of both the Chinese Medical Association and the Chinese Nursing Association. It has been innovating the postdoctoral training model, and attracting and training first-class medical leaders and scientific and technological innovation teams. As a result, multi-disciplinary teams and specialized clinical research teams have grown larger and the management team has become more professional, which gives PUMCH a new edge in pursuing high-quality development and writing a new chapter for talent cultivation.
Better Cultivation Model
The hospital earnestly follows the strategy of strengthening the country with talents in the new era and creates a favorable environment for talents. Over the past ten years, PUMCH has continuously innovated and developed the talent cultivation model, and “medical, teaching, research, nursing, technology and management” talents have thrived. Seeking to cultivate top-notch talents, the hospital has explored innovative pathways through its postdoctoral program and the “4+4” medical student cultivation model.
--Expanding the multidisciplinary team. The outpatient consultation center for intractable diseases continues to expand its coverage of diseases with 34 specialized teams already opened. Efforts have been made to build disease-centered MDT, such as the Pituitary Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Innovation Center and the Palliative Medicine Center. The hospital is also promoting inter-disciplinary convergence, empowering hybrid talents, creating a “goose formation” of talents, and training successors for each discipline.
--Expanding the full-time research team. The hospital is always open to recruit post-doctoral fellows, and it has been building its research teams progressively by hiring full-time researchers and research assistants. Through the PUMCH Youth Fund Program and the PUMCH Youth Excellence Project under the Central High-level Funding for Hospital Clinical Research, the hospital provides young researchers with their first grant.
-- Stepping up the training of specialized nurses. Over the past ten years, 418 new specialized nurses have been trained, covering 30 specialties. The training adheres to high standards, strict requirements, and standardized and scientific management models. Trained nurses’ sense of professional recognition, fulfillment and honor is significantly higher than the national average of their colleagues and peers.
-- Building a stronger team of medical technicians. PUMCH is the first hospital in China to establish a medical technical committee and has carried out professional training for medical technical personnel. Packed with talents, its team of medical technicians plays a leading role in relevant medical fields in China.
--Building a team of professional hospital management talents. We have launched a management backbone training program and since 2017 sent more than 80 clinical backbones to administrative departments for rotational training, cultivating young talents well-versed in “clinical specialty + management”.
PUMCH has a strong faculty with 209 doctoral supervisors and 313 master’s supervisors. Dedicated to cultivating medical elite talents, they have nurtured batches of highly competent medical talents for the country.
Since the hospital launched the postdoctoral program in 2016, the training of high-level hybrid medical talents has paid off handsomely. Aiming at the goal of “core competency of residents”, the program has admitted more students and covered more specialties by the year, with the former increasing from 20 in 2016 to over 100 in 2022. The “Exploration and Practice of the Competency-based ‘8+3’ System for Cultivating High-Level Hybrid Medical Talents” won the First Prize of Beijing Higher Education Teaching Achievement. Among the trainees, two were awarded the title of “National Top Ten Residents” and more than one hundred “Excellent Residents” by the hospital or their department. The model, being demonstrative and pioneering, has become a national institutional arrangement for cultivating top-notch innovative medical talents.
The hospital has also actively worked with Peking Union Medical College to carry out the “4+4” innovative medical student training model, which is about integrating basic medicine and clinical medicine to train medical students. The hospital topped the first ranking of clinical practice education of university-affiliated hospitals. The team of Peking Union Medical College won the championship of the division for eight-year medical education programs in the Medical Technical Skills Competition for Chinese College Students, showcasing the results of professionalism, clinical thinking and technical skills training of medical talents.
PUMCH has turned out a large number of high-level medical talents that go on to work in different parts of China. In the past ten years, the hospital has trained more than 2,500 talents with master’s degree or above, more than 1,300 residents inside and outside the hospital, and more than 20,000 medical professionals seeking further education and learning from all over the country. PUMCHers have made over 3,000 visits to community-level medical institutions for paired assistance to them. PUMCH has built a three-tier treatment and diagnosis collaborative network through medical consortium and specialty alliances. In a nutshell, the hospital has played an important role in cultivating more medical talents that are more professionally competent and can better serve patients.
Stepping up Talent Introduction and Cultivation
PUMCH has continuously improved the evaluation system based on innovation ability, quality and contribution. The professional title evaluation standards for personnel of all levels and categories have been continuously optimized, the stratified and category-specific review and assessment system that combines quantitative and qualitative measurement keeps improving, and the policies that enable all talents to unleash their fullest potential create a favorable environment for them to thrive.
In 2018, the hospital launched the quantitative assessment of senior professional title designation. In response to the guidance of the series of national reforms targeting professional titles, the hospital optimized the quantitative assessment indicators on the medical, teaching and research fronts, assigned more weight to the evaluation of medical ethics and practice behavior, emphasized the quality of papers, explored the implementation of the representative work system, and eliminated the tendency of assigning unduly excessive weight to papers and awards to give outstanding talents more opportunities to stand out and shine.
The hospital implemented a “multi-track” assessment system for clinicians. The “purely clinical type” is subject to evaluation that focuses on the four dimensions of clinical ability, clinical workload, clinical quality and clinical service as well as evaluation of research and teaching performance. The “clinical teaching type” (D+E) and the “clinical research type” (D+R) are subject to evaluation that focuses on teaching performance and research outcomes respectively and allowed to take on less clinical workload. Talents that dive deep clinically and hybrid talents can both have a clear career pathway, and the efforts to build a diversified base of talents are going strong.
The hospital has made a practical and detailed training program for nursing staff in separate tracks. Geared towards the training objective, the hospital has established a “N+X” portfolio of training models, with “N” for clinical nurses, “N+S” for specialist nurses, “N+E” for nursing and education, “N+R” for nursing and research, and “N+A” for nursing and administration. It has cultivated batches of nursing professionals with top skills, excellent quality, efficient services and deep global awareness.
The hospital has also stepped up the training of discipline leaders. With the goal of nurturing strategic scientists and medical leaders that can keep up with the times, PUMCH has developed policies, platforms and mechanisms for recruiting and cultivating discipline leaders. Capitalizing on the central government’s special program to support high-level hospitals, PUMCH has introduced and nurtured more leading talents in scientific and technological innovation. Over the past ten years, more than 20 PUMCHers have served as the director and director-elect of various specialty branches under the Chinese Medical Association, making outstanding contributions to discipline development, talent training, scientific research and international exchanges in the corresponding specialty field.
PUMCH pays close attention to the hospital management, which plays a critical role despite being small in quantity. The hospital coordinates and steps up the cultivation, selection, management, appointment and supervision of them throughout the whole process. Management personnel in key departments and posts go through rotation regularly, which is an opportunity for them to gain more experience and greater competency. Convinced that a strict approach would serve management personnel well, the hospital has improved the leader assessment mechanism featuring incentive and disincentive equally at play, greatly stimulating leaders’ drive and passion to accomplish more.
The hospital has accelerated the introduction of talents in urgent and strong demand and normalized the introduction of international high-level talents. The medium- and long-term plan for human resources and talent development has been published, and the three talent programs, namely “consolidating the foundation through talents”, “strengthening the hospital through talent cultivation” and “introducing high-level talents”, have been proceeding steadily. PUMCH continues to introduce various high-level talents in clinical, research and management fields, thus the distribution of talents is more balanced between disciplines, and the capabilities in technical research and translational research in frontier fields have been greatly improved.
Motivated by the deeply held belief that “the best way to growth is practice”, PUMCH supports young talents to play major and leading roles. Young PUMCHers played big roles in major medical missions such as aid to Tibet and Xinjiang and aid to Wuhan and in medical service provision in major events such as the Beijing Winter Olympic Games and the Winter Paralympic Games. They are also the backbone for innovation and development and dedicated to serving the people. During these processes, their excellent clinical skills, humanistic care, and a strong sense of professional duty and mission are solid proof that PUMCH’s talent work has paid off handsomely.
Fruitful Outcomes
Over the past 100 years, the hospital has nurtured generations of medical masters and many leading figures in modern Chinese medicine. Over the past decade in particular, PUMCH has accelerated the pace of building itself into a first-class medical talent highland and has built a larger base of more competent talents.
The team of Academician Qiu Guixing has long been committed to the research on the causes and mechanisms of spinal deformities. They took the lead in establishing the collaborative group of Deciphering Disorders Involving Scoliosis and COmorbidities (DISCO) and built the first internationally leading genetic research system for skeletal deformities in China, which revealed that the TBX6 variant is the most important genetic cause of congenital scoliosis (CS). The team’s research results have been applied to more than 2,000 patients of spinal deformities, helping to achieve early screening and diagnosis and significantly promoting standardization and homogenization of screening, prevention, diagnosis and treatment in China.
The team of Academician Lang Jinghe led the first randomized controlled clinical study on cervical cancer screening in China, which found that high-risk HPV testing is more suitable for primary screening of cervical cancer in China. The team has actively promoted standardized screening and vaccination for the early elimination of cervical cancer. The pelvic floor team has independently innovated a series of procedures suitable for Chinese people, completed the first Chinese pelvic floor epidemiological survey, revealed the pathophysiological mechanism of pelvic floor diseases, translated and promoted new repair materials with intellectual property rights, and established a three-tier network for the prevention and treatment of pelvic floor diseases in China, fundamentally improving the overall prevention and treatment of pelvic floor diseases for Chinese women.
The team of Academician Zhao Yupei has long been dedicated to clinical and basic research on benign and malignant pancreatic diseases, with the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award secured twice. The team proposed the concept of high-risk population of pancreatic cancer, established the Green Passage for pancreatic cancer diagnosis and treatment and the preoperative resectability assessment system, and also led the development of the process as well as national standard for pancreatic cancer diagnosis and treatment. The team created a comprehensive diagnosis and treatment system for insulinoma with surgical treatment as the core, published the results of an international largest-scale single-center insulinoma research, and created a new method that has significantly increased the qualitative detection rate and localization diagnosis rate of insulinoma.
The hospital resorts to attracting first-class international clinical research talents and training on its own top medical leaders at the same time. It seeks to build outstanding clinical research teams targeting nine research areas that are its advantages, namely, acute respiratory failure, major infectious diseases, female fertility protection, neurological diseases, pancreatic tumors, metabolic diseases, skeletal deformities, rheumatic immune diseases, and rare diseases. These research teams will benchmark themselves against top international counterparts and focus on treatment needs. They will also conduct advanced clinical studies, introduce or cultivate talents in scientific and technologies innovation, and value the cultivation of young talents. The purpose is to have an organization model for innovative research that features “a mix of young, middle-aged and elderly members” and mentorship between them and constantly improve the innovation talent systems.
Since the 19th National Congress of the CPC, PUMCH’s team of difficult and rare diseases has made leapfrog progresses with national support. The hospital has established project teams in the fields of heart, lung and kidney, metabolism, blood, nerve, bone, skin and pediatric rare diseases, and trained more than 200 doctoral candidates and graduate students. As the only national-level leading hospital of the National Rare Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Collaborative Network, PUMCH has built a national multidisciplinary platform, held online and offline multidisciplinary consultations, and conducted various trainings that have reached more than 100,000 doctors nationwide; it organized experts to compile and publish rare disease guidelines, consensus and teaching materials; thanks to such efforts, the awareness and standardized treatment ability of medical professionals in China for rare diseases has been greatly improved.
The international academic influence of PUMCHers has been growing. Over the past decade, many of them have been awarded honorary fellowships of the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Nursing, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Royal College of Surgeons, vice president of the Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis, etc., making the Chinese voice heard on the world stage.
The multitude of talents is the prerequisite to accomplish great things. In alignment with the Party’s leadership in talent work, PUMCH will work relentlessly and do its utmost to cultivate more medical talents that protect people’s health. PUMCH will seek to live up to what the country and the people expect from it and its own mission in this era and strive to accomplish more and become a highland of first-class medical talents.
Written by: Fu Tanping, Chen Mingyan and Chen Xiao
Picture courtesy: The Department of Publicity
Translator: Liu Haiyan
Editor: Wang Yao