On April 9, 2012, the Nursing Cultural Awareness Seminar was held successfully. This seminar was organized by Guanghua International Education Association and the Beijing Nursing Workers Association. The participant experts included: Yu Zugang, Deputy Director of Chinese Vocational Education Society and Vice President of Vocational Education Research Center, Ministry of Education; Professor Zhou Jianli, Li Shujia, President of Beijing Nursing Workers Association; Wu Jinfeng, Vice President and Secretary-General; Guo Guifang, Dean of Peking University Nursing College; Ma Yufen, Deputy Director of Peking Union Medical College Hospital Nursing Department; Zhang Haiyan, Deputy Director of Peking University People's Hospital Nursing Department; Sun Yan, Deputy Director of Beijing Friendship Hospital Nursing Department; Ms. Lin Ying and Ms. Gong Lihua, Head of GIEA; and Zhang Yafeng, Director of Guanghua International Nursing Research Center.

The Seminar Scene

At the beginning of the meeting, Yu Zuguang, Deputy Director of Vocational and Technical Education Research Center, Ministry of Education, gave a special introduction on "Training Workers With Industry Cultural Awareness", and respectively analyzed the following three aspects: the modern industry cultural meaning and support, the modern industry cultural education content and the way of educating its people, as well as the modern industry cultural education practices and case analysis. All the experts agreed with Director Yu’s opinion on the industry cultural education ideas. Afterwards, the participants had a heated discussion, where they realized that China’s nursing industry culture is lacking to some extent as well as affirmed the necessity to recover China’s nursing culture. They also expressed their will to participate in the university-enterprise cooperation cultural research projects in the future.


Yu Zuguang, Deputy Director of Vocational and Technical Education Research Center, Ministry of Education
The participant experts gave a speech on their hospital or school’s situation one by one, and had a heated discussion.
Chairman Li Shujia considered that the changes in the modern social environment has transformed people's attitude and identity towards nursing into a different perspective and it is important for people who are engaged in nursing to love the industry. She also claimed that there were a lot of problems that needed to be solved: What is nursing culture? How to construct nursing culture? What problems existed in the nursing cultural construction?

Li Shujia, President of Beijing Nursing Workers Association
Guo Guifang, Dean of Peking University Nursing College, proposed that there were considerable differences between Chinese and foreign nursing professionals’ social status. She also explained that the social identity of nursing was one of the factors that affected the development of nursing. China’s nursing industry has one hundred years of history, but our cultural education teaching management system is mostly referenced from foreign nursing experience. The incomplete construction of the whole system, added with some comprehensive social problems resulted in the lag of China’s nursing industry development.

Guo Guifang, Dean of Peking University Nursing College
Ma Yufen, Deputy Director of Peking Union Medical College Hospital Nursing Department, spoke about their hospital’s history and their Medical College’s construction process, and introduced the important influence of their three cultural nursing influences - "Library, Medical Records, and Experts". They had their own ideas, from the initial concepts of "Rigorous, Refinement, Diligent, and Dedicated" to "Treat patients as relatives and Treat employees and colleagues as families", which embodied their hospital’s spirit. It also showed that their development was at par with the development of health care and nursing education, which integrated their hospital’s culture into the nursing industry’s development.

Ma Yufen, Deputy Director of Peking Union Medical College Hospital Nursing Department
Zhang Haiyan, Vice Director of Peking University People's Hospital Nursing Department, considered that: nursing professional education was not only about teaching knowledge and skills, but also includes culture. When students go from school to the hospital, and campus to society, they need a smooth transition, so that they can make a good link between schools and hospitals. At the same time, hospitals’ social environment, and nurses’ status has an great influence on nursing student’s professional values. In order for the nursing industry to be developed as a whole, vocational colleges should pay attention to both education infrastructure construction and the cultural construction.

Zhang Haiyan, Vice Director of Peking University People's Hospital Nursing Department
Sun Yan, Deputy Director of Beijing Friendship Hospital Nursing Department, proposed that: the current nursing education is not compatible with the actual needs of the clinical demand, which makes for a shortage of practical clinical talents. The different levels of colleges makes for a big gap among cultivating students' ability, so it is important to promote vocational colleges’ cultural construction.

Sun Yan, Deputy Director of Beijing Friendship Hospital Nursing Department
Zhang Yafeng, Director of Guanghua International Nursing Research Center, proposed that: from a social development perspective, when looking at industry discrimination, the nursing industry is discriminated against; the incomprehension of the nursing industry has made the status of nurses to be low and disrespected. Researching nursing culture will help to promote the development of nursing, by studying nursing cultural values, and the nursing industry’s significance of care. Also, refining nursing culture should not only rely on hospitals or schools, but the whole industry should be involved too. However, in this respect, there are still a lot of places that need improvement in our country’s nursing industry.

Zhang Yafeng, Director of Guanghua International Nursing Research Center
In the university-enterprise cooperation research process, the nursing industry is a typical problem. The research project will focus on: How to make the contact between colleges and hospitals a long-term and systematic relationship. All of the experts at this meeting will form the research group. They will focus on the representative points of nursing cultural construction, and study from the hospitals with good nursing culture, schools with mature education systems, and look at the best cooperation models of colleges and universities. With such a model, we can develop nursing culture as a whole, by exploring, concluding and refining its culture, thus we can promote the development of the nursing industry.

Writer: Dong Dan
Editor: Zhuo Weijia