Abstract
The pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) highlights the importance of early detection of disease outbreaks, taking swift and decisive public health actions, and strengthening public health systems. Preventive medicine, as a specialty of medicine, trains students on both clinical medicine and public health and is of a particular need in battling against this pandemic. In China, preventive medicine plays a unique role in the disease control system where preventive medicine graduates represent a large share of the workforce. However, there is a shortage of qualified staff in the Chinese disease control system. The reasons for such a shortage are multifaceted. From the human resource perspective, the undergraduate preventive medicine curricula and exclusive public health training for preventive medicine postgraduates limit their clinical capacities. A series of disease control and public health education reforms may further incapacitate preventive medicine graduates’ clinical skills, unintentionally widening the gap between public health and clinical medicine and thus posing threats to effective disease detection and control. The authors call for reforming and optimizing preventive medicine to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and public health by strengthening curricula on clinical medicine, diversifying curricula on public health, enhancing preventive medicine residency programs, and rectifying regulations that restrict preventive medicine graduates from practicing curative medicine.
Keywords: Disease control; Human resources; Preventive medicine; Public health.
【저자키워드】 public health., disease control, Preventive medicine, Human resources, 【초록키워드】 COVID-19, coronavirus disease, public health, Coronavirus disease 2019, pandemic, threat, Human, China, Outbreaks, Health, disease control, Early detection, Preventive medicine, Health Education, disease detection, resource, disease, clinical medicine, human resource, clinical skills, Regulation, Threats, curative medicine, Perspective, Chinese, Control system, public health systems, Public, effective, limit, highlight, the disease, unique, restrict, curative, 【제목키워드】 COVID-19, disease control, Preventive medicine, disease,