Late 1980s | The concept of family medicine (FM) was officially introduced into China.1 |
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Early 1990s | Several pilot projects in family medicine were conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang. These had no standard management and no accessible evaluation results. |
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1997 | The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council launched a key strategy to speed up FM education and the training of GPs. |
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1998 | The Ministry of Health (MoH) and nine other ministries commented on the development of Urban Community Health Services (CHS); they wanted to establish a FM education system. |
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1999 | Further directives were issued by the MoH on the development of FM education. The national FM training centre was established by the Capital University of Medical Science in Beijing.2 |
| National curricula for the GP residency training programme and the GP training in service programme were designed at the National FM Education Working Conference. Training standards and requirements were listed. |
| FM formally became an academic discipline.4 |
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2000 | Four-year GP residency training projects were started in Shanghai and Zhejiang. In total there were 74 trainees. Additionally a 3-year GP residency training project was started in Beijing with 300 trainees.4 |
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2001 | The GP training-in-service programme started. This had been listed as a key intervention by the MoH. |
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2002 | The MoH and 10 other ministries issued more directives/guidance on the more rapid provision of urban CHS. |
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Aug. 2002 | The national FM training centre created a FM training network, based on the provincial FM training centres in 30 provinces (not Hainan or Tibet). |
| The GP training-in-service programme was delivered in 17 provinces and municipalities with >20 000 trainees. |
| The China Medical Association and The Chinese Medical Doctor Association both founded FM divisions/branches. |
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2003 | A sample survey in seven provinces and four municipalities showed that 32% of doctors in CHS centres and 43% of doctors in the CHS stations had participated in the GP training-in-service programme. |
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2004 | The GP training-in-service programme had been conducted in 28 provinces and municipalities. Sixty-four out of the 74 four-year FM residents from the training projects in Shanghai and Zhejiang were awarded completion training certificates. |
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2005 | The national FM training guideline for residency programmes was changed from a 4-year course to a 3-year one. |
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2006 | National revised curricula were published for FM residency training, which changed the 4-year training period into 3-year course. |
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| A nationwide FM training base was organised and evaluated by MoH. |
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2007 | Four national FM training curricula were newly published, which included a 500-training hour curricula for GP in service programme, a 10-month curricula for key GPs in service programme, a 240-training hour curricula for the nurses in community, and a 40-training hour curricula for health managers. |
| Twenty-two hospitals were recognised by the MoH as the national GP training bases with totally training ability of 538 trainees per year. |