|
Zhang Yonghong, a GP who has worked at the Yuyuan Community Healthcare Center in Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong Province, said, "The duty of a GP is more than treating patients. It's about being part of their life and community."
There are about 15,000 people in the Yuyuan Community. Zhang said that her center had complete medical records for every resident there and she already recognized almost every patient who calls on her."
Because she found quite a few of the communities' residents were diabetic, Zhang decided to set up a club for patients of this kind. The purpose of the club is to gather diabetes patients together and then give lectures and advice on how to deal with the disease in daily life. They patients also share their experiences in dealing with the disease.
Wang Hongwei, a resident with diabetes in the Yuyuan Community, always goes to Zhang for problems with diabetes. "Once I lost weight rapidly. Initially, I thought it was because I wasn't controlling my blood sugar very well, but Zhang told me it might be because of hyperthyreosis," he said.
Test results confirmed that Zhang's diagnosis was right. As a GP in regular contact with her patients, Zhang is often able to identify diseases at a very early stage.
"Visiting patients' homes is another important task for GPs," Zhang said. "The family environment is very important for patients with chronic diseases such as high blood pressure."
As an additional service, Zhang also answers residents' health-related questions and gives lectures on healthcare topics.
"Sometime people think GPs are able to treat only minor ailments such as colds," Zhang said. "Actually the scope of a GP's business is very broad. We don't suggest that people in emergency medical situations like heart attacks turn to us, but what we do is to prevent people from getting those urgent and severe diseases."
Du estimates that 60 percent of ailing people don't need to go to big hospitals. "Many patients exaggerate the symptoms of their diseases, which causes overcrowded hospitals in large cities and waste of medical resources," she said.
The Yuetan center's GP trial program has been a success. Local residents now make the center their first choice for help when suffering from illnesses and often drop in at the center for various other reasons, including asking for suggestions on diet, hygiene and long-term care.
In 1996, the Yuetan center received only 2,000 patients, but the number rocketed to 210,000 in 2010.
Despite this, Du admits the Yuetan center, as a pilot institution for training GPs, doesn't convey a sense of the state of the GP program in other parts of China.
"Even though the government is putting much more effort into cultivating GPs, 40 percent of current GPs still transfer to other specialities," said Du, who believes a lack of training and low income are the main reasons professionals leave general practice.
Most of the seven GPs who work at Zhang's healthcare center are retired doctors from general hospitals.
"Before retired doctors join us, they receive special training on being a GP, as general practice is different from the work of a specialist," Zhang said. "The training normally lasts for months but the training content has barely changed from the time I was trained 10 years ago."
In Shanxi, there are currently about 4,000 GPs altogether. Only a few of them, however, have passed the national GP exam.
Wang Junying has been working at the Balingqiao Community Healthcare Center in Taiyuan City, north China's Shanxi Province, since 2007. As one of the first 50 GPs in the province, Wang went through a one-year training to convert from a specialist in internal medicine to a GP.
"We spent the first two months on intense theoretical study in a medical college. We compressed lessons that should be finished in one year into two months. Then we spent another eight months in big hospitals on practice, switching from one department to another to become familiar with the work of different departments," Wang said.
Wang believes, however, that the training he received wasn't sufficient to meet the demands of general practice.
| 
