Objective:To investigate the characteristics of continuing medical education (CME) and continuing professional development (CPD) systems in China, the perceptions of health professionals regarding CME/CPD, and their views on the extent to which the current CME/CPD systems meet learning needs.Methods:A questionnaire survey method was employed. The Chinese version of the global CME/CPD questionnaire developed by the Association for Medical Education in Europe was used to conduct an online survey of 2 951 health professionals across 32 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government in mainland China from 2020 to 2021. The survey results were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and content analysis.Results:Among the 2 951 respondents, internal medicine practitioners accounted for the highest proportion (664, 22.50%), and 2 050 (69.47%) of the respondents were located in the eastern region. In the past 12 months, 1 489 (50.46%) respondents participated in 11-30 hours of CME/CPD, and 2 406 (81.53%) considered that the existing activities met their learning needs. There were statistically significant differences ( P<0.05) in the learning needs for CME/CPD, participation in educational training and interprofessional continuing education, and satisfaction with industry-supported CME/CPD among health professionals with different years of practice. Conclusions:Health professionals in China have a high level of participation in CME/CPD. There are differences in their familiarity and satisfaction with the current systems. It is recommended to enhance the promotion of the CME/CPD systems, optimize the teaching content, improve education quality, and strengthen commercial interest regulation. These will better meet the learning needs of health professionals and promote high-quality development in medical education.

Objective:To improve the teaching effect and promote the cultivation of medical talents by innovation of teaching design and learning methods for the "medical ethics" course.Methods:The "medical ethics" course in fall semester of 2021 was reformed, and 779 undergraduate students participated in the course. The course reform included the following elements: "clinical application" was set as the teaching goal and senior clinicians served as the main faculty; a "student-centered" learning format was developed based on social cognitive theory and the case-based learning (CBL) + clinical-scenario-deduction teaching method; formative assessment was conducted for individuals and groups, and essays, reviews, or reports of thoughts and experiences were used as the primary method of summative assessment. Questionnaires were used to evaluate students' satisfaction with the course reform. SPSS 24.0 software was used for statistical analysis. The results of the satisfaction survey were reported as percentage (number of specific cases/total cases).Results:A total of 770 valid questionnaires were collected. The results showed that 98.83% (761/770) students were satisfied with the course, the average score of teachers was 9.5 (0-10) points, the overall satisfaction of the teaching arrangement was 80.52% (620/770), and 96.10% (740/770) students reported that the course had a positive impact on their future career planning and facilitated multiple improvements in learning outcomes.Conclusions:Through the application of appropriate education and teaching methods in the reform of "medical ethics" course, the comprehensive quality and humanistic quality of students have been significantly improved, the teaching purpose has been achieved, and high levels of student satisfaction and teaching effect have been obtained.

Objective:To construct and validate a competency-oriented entrustable professional activities (EPAs)-Competency-Milestones system for assessment of laparoscopic skills (ESALS).Methods:A research team composed of 15 members from five medical institutions was established. Taking the Staged Training and Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills program as the basis for EPAs, ESALS was constructed through scoping review and behavioral event interviews and the use of the Kawakita Jiro method. ESALS was applied to evaluate 49 trainees and 10 specialists (including 5 novices and 5 experts) on basic and advanced laparoscopic skills, respectively, in comparison with two other assessment tools—the Training and Assessment of Basic Laparoscopic Techniques (TABLT) and the Global Operative Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills (GOALS). Perform Mann Whitney U test using SPSS 23.0 software, and use Spearman coefficient for correlation analysis.Results:Through reviewing 13 literuature articles and interviewing 10 senior surgeons, the ESALS was developed, comprising 10 EPAs, 8 dimensions of competency characteristics, and 5 entrustable levels. In the basic skills evaluation, the ESALS score was significantly positively correlated with the TABLT score ( R=0.881, P<0.001). In the advanced skills evaluation, significant differences were observed between the novice and expert groups in all the ESALS competency scores (all P<0.05), while no difference was detected in the GOALS score of tissue handling ability. Conclusions:ESALS provides comprehensive evaluation, detailed standards, and precise feedback, with comparable efficacy to conventional tools. Future work should focus on expanding sample size to verify its generalizability and developing an electronic tool to enhance application efficiency.

Objective:To investigate the characteristics of continuing medical education (CME) and continuing professional development (CPD) systems in China, the perceptions of health professionals regarding CME/CPD, and their views on the extent to which the current CME/CPD systems meet learning needs.Methods:A questionnaire survey method was employed. The Chinese version of the global CME/CPD questionnaire developed by the Association for Medical Education in Europe was used to conduct an online survey of 2 951 health professionals across 32 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government in mainland China from 2020 to 2021. The survey results were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and content analysis.Results:Among the 2 951 respondents, internal medicine practitioners accounted for the highest proportion (664, 22.50%), and 2 050 (69.47%) of the respondents were located in the eastern region. In the past 12 months, 1 489 (50.46%) respondents participated in 11-30 hours of CME/CPD, and 2 406 (81.53%) considered that the existing activities met their learning needs. There were statistically significant differences ( P<0.05) in the learning needs for CME/CPD, participation in educational training and interprofessional continuing education, and satisfaction with industry-supported CME/CPD among health professionals with different years of practice. Conclusions:Health professionals in China have a high level of participation in CME/CPD. There are differences in their familiarity and satisfaction with the current systems. It is recommended to enhance the promotion of the CME/CPD systems, optimize the teaching content, improve education quality, and strengthen commercial interest regulation. These will better meet the learning needs of health professionals and promote high-quality development in medical education.

Objective:To improve the teaching effect and promote the cultivation of medical talents by innovation of teaching design and learning methods for the "medical ethics" course.Methods:The "medical ethics" course in fall semester of 2021 was reformed, and 779 undergraduate students participated in the course. The course reform included the following elements: "clinical application" was set as the teaching goal and senior clinicians served as the main faculty; a "student-centered" learning format was developed based on social cognitive theory and the case-based learning (CBL) + clinical-scenario-deduction teaching method; formative assessment was conducted for individuals and groups, and essays, reviews, or reports of thoughts and experiences were used as the primary method of summative assessment. Questionnaires were used to evaluate students' satisfaction with the course reform. SPSS 24.0 software was used for statistical analysis. The results of the satisfaction survey were reported as percentage (number of specific cases/total cases).Results:A total of 770 valid questionnaires were collected. The results showed that 98.83% (761/770) students were satisfied with the course, the average score of teachers was 9.5 (0-10) points, the overall satisfaction of the teaching arrangement was 80.52% (620/770), and 96.10% (740/770) students reported that the course had a positive impact on their future career planning and facilitated multiple improvements in learning outcomes.Conclusions:Through the application of appropriate education and teaching methods in the reform of "medical ethics" course, the comprehensive quality and humanistic quality of students have been significantly improved, the teaching purpose has been achieved, and high levels of student satisfaction and teaching effect have been obtained.

Objective:To construct and validate a competency-oriented entrustable professional activities (EPAs)-Competency-Milestones system for assessment of laparoscopic skills (ESALS).Methods:A research team composed of 15 members from five medical institutions was established. Taking the Staged Training and Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills program as the basis for EPAs, ESALS was constructed through scoping review and behavioral event interviews and the use of the Kawakita Jiro method. ESALS was applied to evaluate 49 trainees and 10 specialists (including 5 novices and 5 experts) on basic and advanced laparoscopic skills, respectively, in comparison with two other assessment tools—the Training and Assessment of Basic Laparoscopic Techniques (TABLT) and the Global Operative Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills (GOALS). Perform Mann Whitney U test using SPSS 23.0 software, and use Spearman coefficient for correlation analysis.Results:Through reviewing 13 literuature articles and interviewing 10 senior surgeons, the ESALS was developed, comprising 10 EPAs, 8 dimensions of competency characteristics, and 5 entrustable levels. In the basic skills evaluation, the ESALS score was significantly positively correlated with the TABLT score ( R=0.881, P<0.001). In the advanced skills evaluation, significant differences were observed between the novice and expert groups in all the ESALS competency scores (all P<0.05), while no difference was detected in the GOALS score of tissue handling ability. Conclusions:ESALS provides comprehensive evaluation, detailed standards, and precise feedback, with comparable efficacy to conventional tools. Future work should focus on expanding sample size to verify its generalizability and developing an electronic tool to enhance application efficiency.

Objective:To improve the understanding of acute pain after thoracoscopic surgery in patients with early-stage lung adenocarcinoma, to analyze and screen out the independent risk factors that may induce acute postoperative pain. The patients' surgery experience may get improved through the corresponding timely and effective interventions.Methods:We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data of 204 patients with early-stage lung adenocarcinoma who were treated by a single medical team of our center from May 2021 to October 2021, and analyzed the assessment results of acute postoperative pain. Patients were grouped according to the general condition, past medical history, social and spiritual attributes, lesion characteristics, surgical approaches and anesthetic methods. Comparison of proportions of acute postoperative pain between the groups were made, and independent risk factors were identified.Results:A total of 84 males and 120 females were enrolled, with a mean age of(57.9±11.5)years old and a median operation time of 120(110, 145) min. No serious complication or perioperative death occurred in the whole group. Postoperative pain control failed in 76 cases(37.3%), 24 cases(11.8%) suffered from severe postoperative pain, and 33 cases(16.2%) required additional intramuscular injection of strong analgesics after surgery. Those who were younger than 60 years old, with a university degree or above, received two-incision surgery, operated for more than 2 h, received general anesthesia only, or in a state of depression, had significantly higher rates of postoperative acute pain, compared with their respective control groups( P<0.05). The independent risk factors for acute pain after thoracoscopic surgery included age( P=0.002), history of alcoholism( P=0.014), number of incisions( P=0.016), operation time( P=0.010), depression status( P=0.037) and enhanced anesthetic method( P=0.012). Conclusion:A large amount of patients with early-stage lung cancer suffered from acute pain after thoracoscopic surgery, which seriously affected their treatment experience and even quality of life. Young patients with a history of alcoholism and depression status were high-risk groups for postoperative acute pain. Applying Uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, reducing the operation time as much as possible, and choosing enhanced analgesic anesthesia represented by epidural block combined with general anesthesia might be effective ways to reduce the probability of acute postoperative pain.

Chronic disease management is a challenging issue in China. To address the needs of talents and mature innovation ecosystem related to chronic disease management, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University(FAH-SYSU) actively responds to the national strategy to promote the high-quality development of the hospital through strengthening strategic planning, top-level design, and systematic consideration. Precise management of chronic diseases was taken as key measure for the construction of a national medical center. With continuous exploration in establishing talent pool, innovation center and application platform, and chronic disease management system that focuses on core elements of talent and innovation, the FAH-SYSU Model for the precise management of chronic diseases has been initially formed.

To deeply analyze the existing problems in the medical humanities MOOCs, this study adopts qualitative research methods such as participatory observation, interview and special panel discussion from two different perspectives of teaching and learning. On one side, the study follows the course building process of two medical humanities MOOCs in a medical university in South China, and conducts interviews and panel discussions with teaching teams, MOOC producers, and medical education experts in order to understand the problems, challenges and related countermeasures and thoughts in the construction process. On the other side, students' learning feelings, gains and opinions on medical humanities MOOCs in the existing national excellent online open courses have been investigated. Findings revealed that there obvious differences between the attitudes of teaching and learning, which reflects the challenges of the medical humanities MOOCs at the micro level, including difficulties in realizing autonomous learning under effective monitoring and achieving important teaching achievements, excessive workload of teachers, etc.. Furthermore, the differences between teaching and learning have shed a light on medical humanistic education concept, teaching mode and teacher cultivation. Finally, the macro development trend of online and offline coordination and complementarity of medical humanities MOOCs, and the coexistence of mass and personalized curriculum is predicted.

The recent discovery of circular RNAs (circRNAs) and characterization of their functional roles have opened a new avenue for understanding the biology of genomes. circRNAs have been implicated to play important roles in a variety of biological processes, but their precise functions remain largely elusive. Currently, a few approaches are available for novel circRNA prediction, but almost all these methods are intended for animal genomes. Considering that the major differences between the organization of plant and mammal genomes cannot be neglected, a plant-specific method is needed to enhance the validity of plant circRNA identification. In this study, we present CircPlant, an integrated tool for the exploration of plant circRNAs, potentially acting as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs), and their potential functions. With the incorporation of several unique plant-specific criteria, CircPlant can accurately detect plant circRNAs from high-throughput RNA-seq data. Based on comparison tests on simulated and real RNA-seq datasets from Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa, we show that CircPlant outperforms all evaluated competing tools in both accuracy and efficiency. CircPlant is freely available at http://bis.zju.edu.cn/circplant.
Arabidopsis/metabolism* ; Oryza/metabolism* ; RNA, Circular/metabolism* ; RNA, Plant/metabolism* ; Sequence Analysis, RNA/methods*