Welcome to Drs. Wang and Wu

The Department is pleased to welcome Drs. Yayun Wang and Lingxia Wu from Nanjing Medical University in Nanjing, China, as they join us for three months to gain first-hand knowledge of how to set up effective family medicine training programs at home using our program as a model.

Drs. Wang and Wu, who arrived at the beginning of November, will be shadowing a number of our physicians, observing postgraduate family medicine teaching, sitting in on departmental meetings and learning about the family medicine research that takes place at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry in the Department of Family Medicine.

The goal of this training is to help China address its immense lack of primary care providers. Currently in China, only 3% of all doctors practise family medicine and many of those are what are referred to as "barefoot doctors" who practise in rural locations and have very limited formal training.

"As the birthplace of family medicine in Canada, Western is positioned perfectly to take a leading role in providing this training," says Dr. Stephen Wetmore, Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry. "During their time here, they'll learn how we gear our teaching toward providing excellent training for family practitioners."