Pediatrician shortage incites emergency care shutdowns

Li Ruohan

(Global Times )

Updated: 2016-04-28

The pediatric division of Beijing Haidian Hospital began suspending emergency care services during nighttime hours this week, and the department's director told the Global Times that the move was "mainly due to a shortage of pediatricians."

The shortfall in the number of pediatricians has forced hospitals in cities like Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou to stop providing pediatric emergency care or even shut down their pediatric departments. 

Higher pressure, a heavier workload and lower pay attract fewer doctors to work in pediatric departments, Sun Jian, a doctor at Nanjing Children's Hospital in East China's Jiangsu Province, told the Global Times.

Each pediatrician at Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center received an average of 186 patients per day in May 2015, allowing doctors only two minutes to treat each patient, the Xinhua News Agency reported in June 2015.

China's 118,000 pediatricians currently receive 471 million outpatient visits annually, meaning each pediatrician must see 17 outpatients every day, more than double the average of other specialists, Xinhua reported in February. 

Several pediatricians also told the Global Times that Chinese pediatricians face a higher possibility of being involved in disputes with patients' relatives, since many patients are the only child in their families.  

"China needs another 200,000 pediatricians," Jiao Fuyong, temporary adviser to the World Health Organization and head of the Children's Hospital under Shaanxi Provincial People's Hospital, was quoted by Shaanxi-based news site cnwest.com as saying on Tuesday.

To ease the shortfall, the country will improve the training of resident pediatricians and train other specialists to shift to pediatric care, Jin Shengguo of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) said in February. 

Chinese medical universities do not currently offer pediatrics as an undergraduate major, but the Ministry of Education pledged in February that at least one institution in each province will offer the major by 2020.

China will also strive to increase the country's total number of pediatricians to 140,000 by 2020, according to the NHFPC. 

In addition, 80 percent of pediatricians practice in big cities, while some 80 percent of China's children live in medium and small cities, according to Xinhua. 

Zhou Zijun, a public health expert with Peking University, told the Global Times that lower pay and fewer promotions in China's small cities provide insufficient incentives to attract pediatricians to work there.

Hu Meiying, a National People's Congress deputy and nurse in Jiangxi Provincial Children's Hospital, also suggested that the country adopt a price mechanism that reflects the real cost of medical services and the value of pediatricians' labor, Xinhua said.