Village Township Doctor Training

2010 was our fourth year to coordinate and provide continuing medical education training for village doctors  who work in the rural parts of Liaoning Province. 
We worked with the CMU Village Doctor Training Center; No. 1 Hospital Affiliated to Chinese Medical University.  Through your generosity in giving funds we were able to fund top medical professors from CMU to travel and come to one area where 150 village doctors  were gathered to receive training.    Other partners helping us in this undertaking were The General Hospital of Fu Xin Mining Group, and the Health Bureau of the Mongolian Autonomous County of Fu Xin.  The village doctors were provided with the training, housing and food. 

The goals and objectives of the training were:
1. Update the doctors’ medical knowledge and clinical skills.
2. Become a part of SHIC’s professional medical personnel pool.
3. Take part in SHIC’s short –term clinics.  This affords them further opportunities to be mentored by medical professionals from the US and other countries in medicine and in ethics.
4.  Envision and empower doctors to reach their own communities and beyond.

Words cannot truly convey the huge gift this is for the lives of these doctors.  They received top level training, felt supported and had the opportunity to interact and network with their peers.  They thank you hugely.  Below Paula shares her experience there.

Paula Umscheid

Director
We trained 150 village doctors this year in FuXin.  I am always happy to meet these doctors. They are mostly very young.  They are from very remote and very poor areas.  They all have that kind of countryside-kid look.  Their spirits are sweet, their manners so appreciative. They still have an innocence about them.

We hired the best professors from China Medical University.  We hire Chinese professors because it is so easy for Chinese professors to understand the level to which they should pitch their lectures for these village doctors.  They understand the level of the medical information practiced by the village doctors.

I was particularly impressed with one professor whose lecture on cardiology I sat through one morning.  He is a well known cardiologist.  He spoke for three hours straight.  He maintained an appropriate and beautiful sense of humor throughout his lecture.  And most impressive, at the end of his lecture, he told the room full of 150 village doctors to write down his personal cell phone number so that if they encountered a particularly challenging case, they could call him and he would walk them through it.  This was absolutely amazing.  Most of these village doctors had never even been beyond technical school and certainly not to medical school but he was committed to helping them no matter the cost to his personal time.  I was amazed nearly to tears.

We will have these same doctors for the next phase of the training in 2011.

The training included:
November 8th

1. Prevention and treatment of hypertension
2. The treatment of cardiovascular disease
3. Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation

November 9th

• General practice and community health service
• Common diseases of digestive system