Huiqing Ge, Msc, Respiratory Therapy Department Head, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital
School of Medicine, Zhejiang University

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Hospital is a large, modern, comprehensive teaching hospital providing high quality health care and opportunities for postgraduate medical education and scientific research.

Dr. Lixin Xie and RT Team Leader Xingshuo Hu stand before the many award plaques received by the department.

The hospital was founded in 1953, and is situated on the western part of the 4th Beijing Ring Road. The hospital has 165 clinical medical departments, which each year accept 49,000 outpatients and emergency patients while performing nearly 90,000 surgery cases. The medical-health care center is noted for providing high-end preventive care services.

Professor Lixin Xie, MD, PhD, is the chief physician and director of the nationally acclaimed department of respiratory and critical care medicine at the Chinese PLA General Hospital. He has built a team of respiratory therapists who are titled as specialty technical practitioners within the hospital.

The RTs participate in consultation, ward rounding, and case discussion, and they are involved in the ventilation management of the very serious patients. In addition they are assigned to general wards, the bronchoscopy and pulmonary function laboratories, and other specialty clinics.

Dr. Lixin Xie is directly involved in the training of the RTs and considers it important that the RT group participate in clinical work, attend morning shift meetings, and make rounds of the wards with physicians. He stresses the importance of periodic assessment examinations and cultivating clinical training to enhance the RTs’ comprehensive skills.

Members of the respiratory team prepare for patient rounds in the ICU.

The department of respiratory and critical care medicine has a full-time routine inpatient and outpatient treatment center for lung cancer and interventional therapy, sleep disordered breathing clinic, COPD clinics, and other specialized clinics. The department has a long history of quality care, is a nationally recognized Center of Excellence, and has been formally designated as the Respiratory Disease Institute of the PLA and as a Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease.

The PLA General Hospital also incorporates the Postgraduate Medical School of the Chinese PLA and was one of the first institutions authorized by the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council to confer doctoral and master’s degrees. The hospital serves as a teaching hospital of Tsinghua University School of Medicine and Nankai University School of Medicine as well.

The PLA General Hospital has 122 doctoral program supervisors and 212 master’s program supervisors, two post-doctoral research centers, 35 disciplines offering doctoral programs, and 39 disciplines offering master’s programs. Each year the hospital enrolls more than 300 graduate students and 1,000 students for continuous training.

Currently the respiratory and critical care medicine department is recruiting additional capable personnel to join the respiratory care team. In this rich clinical and educational environment the respiratory care team at Chinese PLA General Hospital will continue to develop. Professor Lixin Xie expresses his determination that he will make positive efforts to establish respiratory care as a subspecialty of the respiratory and critical care medicine department.