Graduate students studying clinical medicine in China can graduate with practical results, such as analyses of special clinical cases, instead of writing a thesis. Credit: Xie Shangguo/VCG via Getty
Students pursuing some professional master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical medicine in China may now graduate by demonstrating “practical achievements” instead of submitting a thesis. The change follows a similar pathway introduced for engineering graduate students from 2024, allowing them to graduate after developing new products, technologies, projects or equipment.
On 22 October, a government-appointed education advisory team published a draft policy outlining graduation rules for students enrolled in professional master’s and doctoral programmes in clinical medicine. Both programmes typically last three years and are taken by medical-school graduates and practicing physicians.
Professional graduate programmes in China are designed to train students to solve problems in a particular field of work, rather than to develop research skills in the way that conventional research degrees do. Under the draft rules, clinical-medicine students could graduate by completing practical work such as analysing unusual clinical cases or investigating problems faced by medical institutions.
China’s State Council Academic Degrees Committee, which promotes reforms in graduate education, says similar graduation pathways are expected for programmes in translation, agriculture, accounting and art.
Assessing practical skills
Tayu Huang, a higher-education policy researcher at Hiroshima University in Higashihiroshima, said the reforms were a step in the right direction. Students preparing for professional careers, Huang said, should be trained and assessed in ways that reflect those careers.
“The real challenge is to develop reliable, transparent, and profession-specific standards to measure actual outcomes,” Huang added.
For clinical-medicine students, the new pathway could make it possible to assess how their research contributes to patients and society, said Feifei Zhou, a spine surgeon at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing.
“This will encourage children to find problems in real life and deal with them in a scientific way,” Zhou said.
One of Zhou’s students, Ti Dajiao, was the first participant selected for the pilot programme in 2023 and graduated with a “practical doctorate” in clinical medicine in June. Zhou said Ti had developed artificial-intelligence software that enables doctors to classify types of rare spinal diseases and recommend appropriate treatment strategies.
Creating consistent standards
Liping Duan, chief physician of gastroenterology at Peking University Third Hospital and a member of the national advisory committee responsible for formulating clinical-medicine policy, said universities were being encouraged to create their own policies for training practical graduate students and defining the requirements for graduation.
One of the biggest challenges will be establishing consistent standards for evaluating practical outcomes, Duan said. “For example, what works in cardiology may not necessarily work in dermatology,” she added.
Managing the quality of students’ results will also be important, Duan said. “Some people may mistakenly think that it has become easier for students to graduate because they can now choose not to write a thesis,” she added.
Source: www.nature.com
