Youths have a taste of medical career at hospital

Fifty senior high school and university students, who aspire to become medical workers in the future, toured different departments of the prestigious Shanghai Ruijin Hospital to have a glimpse of medical careers on Monday.

The participants aged 17 on average were invited by the hospital affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine with an aim to feel the profession at zero distance and try hands-on operation during some parts.

They were divided into groups to visit the departments of gastrointestinal surgery, pediatrics, orthopedics, respiratory diseases, and reproductive medicine, and experienced the charm of medical technologies.

Xu Jingtong, who will become a freshman at Tongji University in Shanghai next month, joined a group to tour the reproductive medicine department.

"It was the first time that a professor operated the binding of an egg and sperm in front of my eyes. This is something that I could only read from the biology textbooks. It's quite amazing and impressive as it's perhaps the successful birth of a new life," Xu said.

"I felt from the experience today that the sense of achievement of being a doctor is incomparable. They not only fight with death nowadays. They can help do something related to birth," she said.

Many participants said that they were excited to have real experience at a hospital and they were amazed at the cutting-edge medical technologies and the warmth throughout the treatment for patients.

Chen Erzhen, vice-president of Ruijin Hospital, said that he hoped all the participants can feel the marvel and beauty of medicine and the responsibility and mission for all medicine workers.

"When a society confronts any accident, apart from various social forces, medical workers play usually an indispensable role as they provide the public with the hope of life," he said.

Yu Yuping, deputy Party secretary of Ruijin Hospital, said that it has been the 10th time since the medical institution first held such an activity in 2012.

"Hundreds of students from schools at home and abroad have participated in the activities, and near half of them have taken on the path of studying medicine," she said.