Public anticipation of clinician graduates in the new era of healthy China: A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study

Objective The purpose of this study was to offer new suggestions for current clinician training under the guidance of the Healthy China 2030 policy by investigating the patients' needs. Methods This study surveyed adult outpatients from West China Hospital of Sichuan University between March and July, 2019 and February and May, 2020 by self-constructed questionnaires to investigate the expectation and requirements of outpatients towards medical professionals. Results A total of 430 questionnaires were distributed, and 402 of them (93.5%) were collected and included in this study. All questionnaire respondents expected that medical graduates should have outstanding expertise and ethical standard. The majority valued qualities such as physical and mental health (90.05%), a bachelor's degree or higher (73.88%), knowledge on disease control and prevention (61.69%), knowledge on health care (91.29%), ability to continuously update current knowledge (70.65%), and excellent communication (71.14%) and teamwork (62.44%) skills. In addition, most patients expected that new health care providers to possess humanitarianism and professional dedication relevant traits, and could improve diagnoses and treatments via research activities. Patients' demand for abilities such as disease control and prevention, health care, and integrative cooperation between traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine significantly increased after the COVID-19 pandemic (P<0.05). Conclusions Nowadays, to provide health care services which meet the needs of the public, clinicians are expected to have qualities such as outstanding expertise, humanity, research and knowledge-updating skills, disease control and prevention, health care management, and capability to take the advantages of traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine. © 2021 West China University of Medical Science. All rights reserved.