A new program to enhance the teaching and assessment of clinical skills in the People's Republic of China.

The authors describe the history and current state of development of an ongoing and still-evolving collaboration--between three Chinese medical schools, the China Medical Board of New York, Inc. (CMB), and one of the authors (PLS) and her staff at the University of Massachusetts Medical School--to enhance the teaching and assessment of clinical skills in the schools. The program grew out of a request by the three schools to the CMB for assistance in improving their process of evaluating students. Its goal is to develop a uniform and comprehensive course for teaching and assessing basic clinical skills. Standardized patients are also being used as instructors and evaluators. The program is co-sponsored by the three schools and the CMB. Background is given about the CMB, its involvement in Chinese medical education, and its American perspective on the nature of education in Chinese institutions of modern medicine and the factors that can assist and impede educational change. The authors present the mechanisms of the program, the benefits that have occurred so far, and the problems encountered in creating the model curriculum to teach clinical skills that is now being implemented by the three schools. Future plans are outlined, including the hope that the three schools will serve as a resource and disseminate some or all aspects of the new approach to similar medical schools in China, and that the program can serve as a model for implementation of similar programs in other countries.