CHEST Foundation Grants: Training Village Doctors in China

May 11, 2016

In 2012, Renli Qiao, MD, PhD, FCCP, won the D. Robert McCaffree, MD, Master FCCP Humanitarian Award for his critical work with village doctors in rural China. Because medical schools in China are located in larger metropolitan areas where graduates are likely to stay, medical resources are unevenly distributed across the country.  Physicians with shortened medical education often staff rural hospitals, and smaller villages usually house a single village doctor with a high school diploma and 3 to 6 months of medical training.

Inspired by his work with the China California Heart Watch (CCHW), Dr. Qiao created a program to train rural medical professionals so that their efforts would have a sustaining  impact on the care that residents of these villages receive. Volunteer physicians traveled through as many villages on foot to spend several days in each village where they would see about 250 villagers a day.

In these villages, the doctors were also able to perform heart examinations for hundreds of children in the village schools. The team observed that although hypertension is the leading cause of death in China and the antihypertensive drugs are relatively affordable, there is a high incidence of hypertension and up to 95% of hypertensive patients were never diagnosed or treated.

Realizing the need to train doctors on the importance of preventive care, early diagnoses, and treatment of hypertension, Dr. Qiao led the initiative to educate thousands of doctors in the Yunnan province. His model involved 2-day seminars and included participatory workshops, lectures, group collaboration, and the dissection of clinical cases.

Dr. Qiao’s effort not only improved the lives of thousands of patients but also achieved a lasting model to educate rural doctors.