The School of Rehabilitation Medicine was jointly established by Southern Medical University (SMU) and Guangdong Disabled Persons’ Federation (GDPF) in 2011, the first institute of the kind in South China. In 2013, it was provincially approved as a “pilot institute” of rehabilitation medicine and also accredited as a national rehabilitation practice teaching base. In 2018, it was listed among the first nationally accredited institutes offering master’s programs in Rehabilitation Therapy.
Rehabilitation Therapy, a degree program started in 2009, was provincially accredited a “characteristic undergraduate program” in 2018. The program focuses, first and foremost, on developing students’ basic abilities in holistic thinking, problem-solving and decision-making in clinical practice. Besides these core abilities, the program also aims to cultivate future rehabilitation therapists with a strong sense of social responsibility, humanistic care, initiative in scientific innovation as well as forward thinking, who can really tackle increasingly sophisticated healthcare problems facing the world.
The School currently has 32 full-time faculty members as well as 11 part-time clinical physicians, serving in its five teaching and research divisions. Of all the faculty members, 63.2% are full or associate professors, and 79.8% hold a master or doctor degree. In recent years, the School has invited four academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and/or the Chinese Academy of Engineering as guest professors, in addition to 4 outstanding young talents as full-time faculty members.
For the past decade, the School has made great achievements in talent training and academic research. The faculty members have won three teaching achievement awards, one top prize and two third prizes in varying teachers’ skills competition at the national level, as well as one “May 1st Labor Medal of Guangdong Province”. So far, the faculty has published a total of 134 journal articles, with 35 of them included in SCI journals, as well as a wide array of monographs and course books like, e.g. Human Auxology, Community-based Rehabilitation, Sports Taping Techniques, Mulligan Concept, and A Guide to Rehabilitation Medicine Education in China. Moreover, the School’s research team has undertaken 14 national natural scientific research projects, 13 undergraduate teaching quality engineering projects, 7 innovative and effective teaching reform projects at the provincial level, and 25 scientific research projects at the provincial or municipal level.
By far, a total of 316 students have completed their studies, with the degree-conferring rate reaching 96%, and the employment rate exceeding 97%. Besides, about 30% of the undergraduates continue to take a master’s or doctoral program, including 32 studying abroad. In the past three years, 75.6% of the graduates have got employed in hospitals, and 5% of them have started their own businesses, with the rest serving in other institutions like, e.g. disabled persons’ federations at different levels, research institutes, special education centers. The enrolled students have won the second prize or above in the National Rehabilitation Medical Education Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition for two consecutive years, in addition to some other 12 national awards and 5 provincial awards in varying professional competitions. Moreover, they have also obtained 19 patents, and won 12 awards in college students’ entrepreneurship competitions at the national or provincial level.
The School has been striving to create more opportunities for students’ international exchanges. For example, it has just launched a new international exchange program with a corresponding English teaching curriculum, adopting an alternative “3+1+1” or “4+1” successive undergraduate to master’s degree model. As of March 2020, 45 students out of the School have continued their studies in prestigious higher institutions at home and abroad like, e.g. New York University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, University of Birmingham, University of Pittsburgh, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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