Shenzhen Commercial Daily reporter Zhang Yan
May 12th is the 113th International Nurses Day. This year’s theme is “Developing the Nurse Team and Optimizing Nursing Services”.
The latest data released by the Municipal Health Commission on May 11 shows that as of the end of 2023, there were 54,649 practicing nurses in the city, including 3,272 men and 51,377 women, responsible for 126.75 million outpatient and emergency care and 2.26 million hospitalizations in the city.
In Shenzhen, nurses not only only know how to give injections and medicines, but specialist nurses can also go to outpatient clinics and write prescriptions.
In recent years, there have been more and more “new generation” nurses with master’s or doctoral degrees and innovative patents. The academic qualifications and professional titles of nurses in Shenzhen are both higher than the provincial average.
Currently, there are 7 people with doctorate degrees, 322 people with master's degrees, and 17,514 people with bachelor's degrees in the city's nursing team. 32.65% have a bachelor's degree or above, which is 4 percentage points higher than the provincial average. At the same time, there are 365 chief nurses, 2,268 deputy chief nurses, and 15,715 supervisor nurses. The proportion of intermediate and above professional titles reaches 33.57%, which is 13 percentage points higher than the provincial average.
Nurses can better serve as academicians. Shenzhen has four Fellows of the American Academy of Nursing ("FAAN"), one of the most prestigious honors in the global nursing community. They are Fu Xia, director of the Nursing Department of the Eighth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University (hereinafter referred to as "CUHK Eighth Hospital"), Cai Wenzhi, deputy director of Shenzhen Hospital of Southern Medical University, Xie Xiaohua, director of the Nursing Department of Shenzhen Second People's Hospital, and Wu Huiping, former director of the Nursing Department of Shenzhen People's Hospital.
Why them?
It is understood that the American Academy of Nursing was founded in 1973 to attract global talents to guide the development of nursing disciplines, participate in the formulation and implementation of health care policies, and use nursing knowledge to promote human health. As of 2023, there are more than 3,000 academicians of the American Academy of Nursing from more than 40 countries and regions around the world, including about 89 from mainland China.
Among the four academicians in Shenzhen, Fu Xia and Cai Wenzhi were elected in 2022, while Xie Xiaohua and Wu Huiping were elected in 2023.
What kind of nurse can become an academician? A few days ago, the reporter had an exclusive interview with Fu Xia. She said: "Every October, the selection of new academicians of the American Academy of Nursing officially begins. Candidates must be recommended by two current academicians. The academician selection committee will then review the evidence of their significant contributions to the development of nursing and human health. Generally, the list of newly elected academicians and international academicians of the previous year will be announced in June of the following year."
In general, each elected candidate must make outstanding contributions in his/her professional field.
Fu Xia has made outstanding achievements in the field of hemodialysis. She has served as the chairperson of the Hemodialysis Nursing Committee of the Guangdong Nursing Association for three consecutive terms. Since 2013, she has served as the deputy chairperson of the Blood Purification Committee of the Chinese Nursing Association. She has written or participated in many expert consensuses, standards and specifications.
Cai Wenzhi mainly studies incontinence care, rehabilitation, midwifery rehabilitation, advanced midwifery practice and nursing equipment research and development, and occupational safety and health of medical personnel. The development and promotion of her urinary incontinence rehabilitation nursing technology won the first prize of the Scientific Achievement Award of the Chinese Society of Rehabilitation Medicine. It has created a model unit for the National Health Commission’s midwifery undergraduate program in China and created an independent undergraduate midwifery education major for the Ministry of Education.
Xie Xiaohua has devoted himself to clinical research on stroke risk assessment and intervention measures, and emergency and critical care nursing procedures for many years. He has edited and published more than 10 professional books, presided over more than 20 scientific research projects, and won multiple national, provincial, and municipal science and technology worker awards. He also led the Nursing Department of the Municipal Second People's Hospital to be selected into the top 100 Chinese hospital science and technology rankings.
Wu Huiping is a nursing worker with super-high invention skills and has more than ten invention patents. He has successively invented a disposable throat sprayer with a long cannula; a "hand-relieving tool" for ICU patients to solve incontinence – a fecal drainage catheter with a pressure measuring balloon, and won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. She leads the nursing team of the Municipal People's Hospital to actively develop small inventions that benefit patients, with 30 to 40 small inventions being produced every year.
As soon as I was out of confinement, I sat in the doctoral classroom
Fu Xia is the youngest of the four academicians, 46 years old this year.
She is a Ph.D. But when she enrolled in Tianjin Medical University as an undergraduate, she thought that nurses did not need a high degree of education, and a technical secondary school was enough.
When she failed the college entrance examination and was transferred to the nursing major, she was very disappointed at first. However, her alma mater was the first institution in the country to resume five-year undergraduate nursing education. The good atmosphere of the school and the guidance of her tutors gave her a firm sense of mission for nursing work.
After graduation, she came to work at the Institute of Geriatrics of Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital and became an ICU nurse.
In this place closest to death, she saw the helplessness of many elderly patients. As a highly educated nurse, her heart was full of helplessness. She didn't know what she could bring to the patients. Therefore, she came up with the idea of continuing to study to find answers. In 2004, she obtained a master's degree in nursing from Sun Yat-sen University.
The road to training has only a starting point and no end. She came up with the idea of taking the exam. But the doctorate will be out of work for half a year, where will the gap come from? After thinking about it, she decided to use the half-year maternity leave to study for a doctorate.
The pregnancy was one month later than expected, so the due date was late August, so she had to go to class before the baby was born. Her husband, who felt sorry for her, discussed with her whether she could study for a Ph.D. after the baby was born. At 36 weeks into her pregnancy, she gave birth by caesarean section. 28 days later, she entered the doctoral class of nephrology at Southern Medical University.
"I was lucky enough to catch the 'last train' that offered me a master's degree in nursing and a doctorate in clinical medicine." During her Ph.D. studies, she would always write papers early in the morning and show up at work at 8 a.m. the next day. "The best way to live is to work hard on the ground and do everything well."
The nursing team of the Provincial Medical Hemodialysis Center led by Fu Xia is not only among the best in the province in terms of professional capabilities, but she also drafted the provincial nursing standards related to hemodialysis. “Everyone thinks of me when they talk about hemodialysis nursing.” She is not satisfied, but hopes to move to a higher management platform, improve the leadership and morale of the entire nursing team, and enable every nurse to fall in love with their profession from the bottom of their hearts.
At this time, the Eighth College of CUHK extended an olive branch to her.
Led a nursing team with the largest number of PhDs in the city
The journey from Guangzhou to Shenzhen is only over a hundred kilometers, but it is a completely new environment.
In the new position, Fu Xia works harder. She not only has to attend daily morning meetings, weekly (department) head nurse meetings, and monthly hospital-wide head nurse meetings… She also ensures that each of the more than 60 head nurses and standing team leaders in the nursing department has the opportunity to communicate face-to-face with her at least three times a month.
Fu Xia has also opened appointments to more than 1,100 nurses in the hospital. If anyone encounters a problem or the morale of any department is low, she will arrange time to personally come to the door to "deliver chicken soup", "give chicken blood" and "special nutritional powder"…
Every Wednesday and Thursday morning is her fixed outpatient time; in the evening after get off work, she has to review the day's work, review meeting minutes, write papers, prepare lessons, and do PPT…
"I ask myself to go all out and devote myself to it every day, so that I will not be let down every 24 hours." After more than two years in Shenzhen, her colleagues gave her the title of "Shenzhen Paper King".
Not only did she take exams herself, she also led the nurses to take exams for academic qualifications, scientific research, and service.
Encouraging nurses to learn lifelong has become the "main theme" of her conference meetings. The Eighth College of CUHK has a benefit that provides annual performance rewards of 10,000 to 15,000 yuan to employees studying for master's and doctoral degrees. "You have the opportunity to study, and there are people who will help you pay for it. Why don't you go?" Fu Xia, a fast-talking person, said that as long as a nurse is willing to apply for a graduate degree, she will provide all-round guidance.
In the first year she came to the Eighth Hospital of CUHK, two nurses were admitted to the master's degree program, and one in the second year. In the third year, Jiang Dan, a nurse in the hemodialysis room, obtained a doctoral diploma. The hospital also introduced Dr. Li Caixia from the Nethersole School of Nursing of the Chinese University of Hong Kong through the Sun Yat-sen University "High-Level Talent Plan". She is the first nursing "postdoctoral" in the Shenzhen Medical System and the CUHK System.
Currently, Fu Xia leads a nursing team with the largest number of doctors in the city, including her, a total of three. In January, the hospital was also successfully approved for a master's degree program in nursing, becoming the first medical institution in Shenzhen to have a master's degree program in nursing.
In her first year in Shenzhen, Fu Xia applied to become an academician of the American Academy of Nursing and was successfully elected. However, due to force majeure, she was not able to attend the American Academy of Nursing Annual Meeting in 2023. She benefited a lot from this participation.
"In the communication session before the opening ceremony of the annual meeting, the participating representatives were divided into several groups of 10 people each to discuss different themes." She said that she participated in the genetic nursing group, which shocked her greatly. "We are still in the stage of advocating intervention, and they have developed to the stage of genetic nursing." She cherishes the opportunity to communicate with global nursing elites.
In September, she will go to the UK to participate in the Advanced Nursing Practice Network Workshop for Nursing Practitioners organized by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and give a poster exchange.
She hopes to learn from the strengths of others, and she also hopes to show the appearance and level of Shenzhen’s nursing team and nursing work through herself.
"In 2011, nursing differentiated from clinical medicine and became a first-level discipline that includes scientific knowledge such as nature, humanities, society, and medicine." Fu Xia said that nurses are not "waiters" nor "odd workers."
At 8 p.m. on May 12, she will give a lecture on the main steps of the North District of Shenzhen Central Bookstore, leading the public into nursing and getting to know the "gods" and "goddess" who protect residents' health.
