Southern Medical University, located in Guangzhou, formerly the First Military Medical University, was founded in 1951. It renamed Southern Medical University in 2004. The University began to enroll Chinese Government Scholarship students and international undergraduate students for English-taught clinical medicine programs in 2006. It was designated as a national key university.
The university has 17 schools (The First Clinical Medical School, The Second Clinical Medical School, School of Basic Medical Sciences, School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, School of Biotechnology, School of Humanities and Management, School of Foreign Studies, School of Marxism Study, Graduate School, School of Continuing Education, School of International Education, School of Medical Technology and School of Stomatology). Among 19261 students enrolled, 13150 are undergraduate students and associate students, 4898 are postgraduate students and 1037 are international students.
The University is not just an institution of medical sciences, its discipline areas include medicine, natural science, engineering, literature, management, law and economics. It has 10 first-level disciplines (Clinical Medicine, Basic Medical Sciences, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Integrated of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine, Chinese Traditional Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nursing and Special Medicine) for doctoral degree, and 6 post-doctoral research stations (Basic Medical Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Integrated of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine and Biology). It offers 31 undergraduate programs, 76 doctoral programs and100 postgraduate programs. It has 3 state-level key subjects, 2 state-level prospective subjects and 5 state-level key subjects of traditional Chinese medicine. Among them, the number of first-class medical doctorate-accredited disciplines ranks first in Guangdong Province and second in the national medical institutions. It has 5 national key and training subjects, and 4 subjects ranked the top 1% of the world's ESI, the overall ranking of the province's No. 3 universities and the country's 65th.
The number of the University full-time teachers is 2030 . 410 of them are PhD supervisors, and 637 are supervisors for postgraduates. 3 of them are academicians and 2 of them are double-employed academicians. It has 3 national teaching teams and 4 national famous teachers.
The University has 11 affiliated Hospital directly under (Nanfang Hospital, Zhujiang Hospital, The Third Affiliated Hospital, Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital, Shenzhen Hospital, Stomatology Hospital, Dermatology Hospital, Shenzhen Stomatology Hospital, Shunde Hospital, Nanhai Hospital) with a total number of over 10000 beds. It has 17 national clinical key subjects, 60 clinical key subjects of Guangdong Province, and 12 Guangdong Province Medical Quality Control Center.
The University regularly conducts cooperation such as exchange of teachers and students, joint training, international scientific research cooperation and the cooperation on running schools and hospitals with 51 universities or institutes in 19 countries or regions in Europe, America and Asia-pacific region.
The infrastructure of the University is perfect. The University has a good environment for informationized teaching and advanced facilities for a good living. The dormitories for international students are well equipped with air-conditioning, telephone, internet, TV and water-heating system.
In 2005, the University began to enroll undergraduate international students majored in MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, programs delivered in English), and in 2006, it started to enroll international students who enjoy Chinese Government Scholarship. So far more than 1,800 international students from 85 countries have studied in the University. The University has also been delegated by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Commerce to train more than 2,532 foreign officials and technicians from 116 countries and regions working on medical education and health-care management.
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