CRI听力:General Practitioner System

Reporter: Healthcare experts believe that the establishment of a general practitioner system will be a major step towards improving medical care and eliminating the increasing number of public complaints regarding the difficulty and costliness of seeing doctors.

Li Xiaoying is an expert with China's Ministry of Health.

"It will form the foundation of our healthcare network so that 70 or even 80 percent of patients can see doctors at neighborhood clinics or small hospitals. Only 20 or 30 percent of people will receive medical treatment in large hospitals. This is the fundamental way of increasing people's access to healthcare. "

Though community-level medical care facilities have been rapidly expanding, most people still do not trust small hospitals due to the lack of qualified personnel and equipment. They would rather flock to larger hospitals and wait for hours to see a doctor despite only suffering from minor illnesses.

Obviously, exhausted doctors working in overcrowded hospitals have no time to provide preventive care and health education.

Li Xiaoying says qualified general practitioners will be able to shoulder these responsibilities and help community residents prevent diseases.

The State Council, or China's Cabinet, published a document earlier this year laying down guidelines for the establishment of the GP System.

According to the document, there will be two or three general practitioners in practice for every 10,000 urban and rural residents. However, at the moment China only has about 80,000 registered GPs; meaning there is only one general practitioner in practice for every 16,000 people.

Han Jianjun is the publisher of Chinese General Practice, a magazine dedicated to the training of general practitioners.

"At present, we don't even have a qualified team of trainers for practitioner candidates. We especially lack professional trainers in clinical practice. Our first step should be standardizing criteria - we should figure out a selection standard, what kind of people can work as trainers. "

Han Jianjun adds that improving GP's capabilities in clinical practice is the crux to improving medical care.

Previous training programs were highly dependent on medical schools. But education in the classroom is not enough. Han Jianjun urges the government to create a comprehensive training system including both medical schools and hospitals of different sizes. Clinical training will provide candidates with valuable experiences they so desperately require.

For CRI, I'm Su Yi.