Objective To investigate awareness of definition, diagnostic criteria, severity classification and standard diagnosis and treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) among primary-care physicians at the grassroots in urban and suburban Shanghai.Methods In total, 298 physicians were surveyed by unified questionnaire for COPD-related knowledge in two secondary-care general hospitals (one in urban and suburban areas each ) and 12 community primary-care centers (four in urban and eight in suburban areas) in Shanghai.One hundred and fifteen physicians in two urban hospitals and one suburban hospital were trained professionally and then evaluated for its effectiveness.Results Awareness of diagnostic criteria of COPD was only 22.4% (35/156), 25.6% ( 10/39), 4.3 % (3/69)and 26.5% (9/34) among physicians in urban primary-care hospitals, urban secondary-care hospitals,suburban primary-care hospitals and suburban secondary-care hospitals, respectively.Their awareness of knowledge about use of anti-cholinergic agents was 13.5 % (21/156), 35.9 % ( 14/39), naught (0/69),and 14.7 % ( 5/34 ), respectively.Only 0.67 % of them ( 2/298 ) knew about severity classification of COPD.Awareness of definition and diagnostic criteria for COPD in the physicians increased to 72.2 % ( 83/115) after training from 18.2% (21/115) before it, and their awareness of severity classification for COPD increased to 45.2% (52/115) after training from 0.8 % (1/115) before it.Conclusions Awareness of COPD-related knowledge, especially of standard diagnosis and treatment for COPD, was poor in primary-care physicians at the grassroots in Shanghai, so it is necessary to strengthen training for them in COPD-related knowledge, including pulmonary function tests.