Established in 1999, the Department of General Practice of West China Hospital, SCU, is one of the earliest general medical departments established in large-scale general hospitals in China. It is the first clinical department of general hospital in the western China region to carry out the medical care, education and scientific research in general practice specialty.
Currently, the Department has 14 doctors, including 1 master tutor, 1 professor, 2 associate professors, 4 attending physicians and 7 resident physicians. The Department has created a new model of discipline construction and development in general medicine in large comprehensive hospitals in such aspects as the general medical operation mode, integration of general practice and specialties, hospital-community graded clinical synergy, health/chronic disease management, standardized training for general practitioners, etc.
I. Carrying out Integrated Clinical Medicine and Innovating the Development Model of General Medicine
According to the characteristics of general medicine, the Department subdivides medical technology service processes and elements, grasps the role of general medicine in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in comprehensive hospitals, and launches a series of diversified new models of general medicine clinical operation, such as general practice-specialty grading cooperative outpatient service, "general practice-specialty integrated" inpatient comprehensive medical treatment, general practice-specialty "two-way referral" and integrated health/chronic disease management service.
II. Training General Practitioners and Strengthening the Construction of Professional Talent Team
As the former and the first batch of "Standardized Training Base for General Practitioners" under the Ministry of Health (2006) and "Clinical Skills Training Base for General Practitioners" under the State Health and Family Planning Commission, it has trained over 800 general practitioners, over 1,000 clinical teachers of general practice for Sichuan Province, and 700 community general practitioners. As a teaching and research unit, the Department also provides long-term tele-education for general practitioners at grass-roots level, community clinical practice teaching, practice training for general practitioners, etc. It has been admitting masters of general practice since 2012.
III. Realizing Effective Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Diseases from Hospital Treatment to Community Management
Given that chronic non-communicable diseases tend to become a major threat to health, disability or death in the population, the Department has strengthened the clinical diagnosis & treatment focusing on common chronic diseases. It has diagnosed and treated near 10,000 cases of endocrine and metabolic diseases (type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, hyperlipidemia, obesity, gout), cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases (hypertension, coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, cerebral insufficiency and cerebral infarction, etc.) and respiratory disease (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory tract infection and asthma) every year.
The Department also set up "Community Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Group" to conduct comprehensive prevention and management of chronic diseases. Up to now, it has established health/ disease profiles for nearly 5,000 chronic and high-risk patients, for whom regular health check-ups, data collection, health status assessment, risk analysis and intervention, follow-up of post-discharge outcomes, counseling on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and health education have been arranged, receiving a good "three-level prevention" effect, namely disease prevention, early treatment and prevention of complications.
In 2017, as the first department approved by the National Medical Products Administration, the Department was acknowledged as "Clinical Drug Trial Base for General Medicine", actively conducting the clinical trials of drugs for diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases.
The general medicine service model is at the leading level in China, which is characterized by integrating health maintenance and promotion, clinical diagnosis and treatment and management of chronic diseases, as well as the collaboration of general medicine of comprehensive hospitals with the community health service centers.
4. Carrying Out Clinical Scientific Research Based on the Community to Promote the Integrated Prevention and Management of Chronic Diseases
The Department has integrated various resources to carry out research on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and the management of community health services based on urban and rural communities. Since 2008, the Department has organized several projects, such as Investigation of Prospective Urban-rural Epidemiology (PURE) under WHO, “Standardized Management of Hypertension Community in China” under the Ministry of Health's Disease Control Bureau, and the sub-project of the National "Eleventh Five-Year Plan", a study of Interventions Prehypretensives (Pre-HT stage 2) Associated with Cardiovascular Risk Factors (CHINOM), etc.
