About Journal of Xiamen Medical College

Journal of Xiamen Medical College

The Journal of Xiamen Medical College, published in Chinese as Xiamen Yixueyuan Xuebao, is the medical journal of Xiamen Medical College in Xiamen, Fujian Province. The host descends from a missionary-era medical training tradition in Gulangyu, passed through junior-college stages and was upgraded to the undergraduate Xiamen Medical College in March 2016 with the approval of the Ministry of Education — the city's only public medical undergraduate institution, and one of only three undergraduate medical universities in Fujian Province. Its journal covers clinical medicine, nursing, pharmacy and oral medicine: the fields of a young undergraduate medical college serving the coastal city of Xiamen and central and southern Fujian. No ISSN was attested in the sources consulted for this profile.

A Young Undergraduate Medical College's Journal

Xiamen Medical College is a full-time public general undergraduate institution, the only undergraduate medical university in central and southern Fujian. Its journal is the scholarly record of that institution: research and clinical writing produced by its teaching departments and its affiliated hospitals, published in Chinese. Because the college achieved undergraduate status only in 2016, its journal belongs to the newest generation of Chinese medical-university journals, created as a former junior college built the research profile that undergraduate status requires. Its pages show a teaching-focused medical college developing a publication culture alongside its degree programmes.

Origins on Gulangyu

The college traces its origin to the Gulangyu medical tradition: institutional histories state that the school's origin can be traced back to the Gulangyu Medical College established in 1898, on the island off Xiamen that was then an international settlement with missionary hospitals and schools, while the listing for this profile describes a 1924 missionary-era medical training tradition in Gulangyu from which the college descends. Through a hundred years of changes the institution passed through medical junior-college stages, training more than twenty thousand medical and health technical personnel in one institutional account, before its undergraduate elevation. That Gulangyu beginning connects the modern college — now in Jimei District, Xiamen, the hometown of the patriotic overseas-Chinese leader Chen Jiageng (Tan Kah Kee) — to the treaty-port origins of Western medicine in southern Fujian.

Upgrade to Undergraduate Status in 2016

In March 2016, on the basis of the existing medical college, Xiamen Medical College was established as an undergraduate institution with Ministry of Education approval. The college then offered six undergraduate majors — clinical medicine, stomatology, nursing, pharmacy, Chinese pharmacy and biopharmaceuticals — and in 2018 added psychiatry and rehabilitation, among the additions that brought its undergraduate portfolio to fifteen majors in later institutional summaries, expressly to meet the talent needs of the province and city and to remedy shortcomings in people's livelihood services. A journal founded in such a period serves a defined institutional purpose: it gives the new undergraduate college's staff a publication venue as their work shifts from purely vocational teaching toward degree-level scholarship and research.

Departments and Affiliated Hospitals

The college has nine teaching institutions, including departments of clinical medicine, stomatology, nursing, pharmacy, medical technology, basic medicine and public courses, a school of Marxism and a department of continuing education, together with teaching-support institutions such as its experimental centre and information technology centre. It has two directly affiliated hospitals: the Second Affiliated Hospital, a third-grade general hospital, and the Affiliated Stomatological Hospital, a third-level specialised hospital with more than two hundred dental treatment units in institutional accounts. Beyond them stand two non-directly affiliated hospitals — Xiamen Xianyue Hospital and Quanzhou Children's Hospital — sixteen teaching hospitals and more than one hundred and seventy off-campus practice facilities. The college also hosts a practice-skills examination base for the national physician qualification examination in the clinical and dental categories. Clinical writing from this hospital network is the natural content of its journal.

Scope: Clinical Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Oral Medicine

The listing identifies the journal's coverage as clinical medicine, nursing, pharmacy and oral medicine, matching the college's principal departments. Oral medicine has a particular weight here: the college's stomatological tradition is strong, its affiliated dental hospital is a tertiary specialist institution, and in the junior-college era its stomatological technology students won repeated national vocational-skills honours. Nursing and pharmacy likewise reflect established departments rather than new ventures. The journal's contents thus concentrate on the applied health professions in which a city medical college actually teaches and practises, rather than ranging across the whole of medical science.

Serving Xiamen and Southern Fujian

Xiamen is a major coastal city and special economic zone, and its medical college recruits and trains for the health system of central and southern Fujian. Institutional accounts from the junior-college period recorded a graduate employment rate above ninety-nine percent sustained over six consecutive years — a sign of how directly its training is geared to local health-service employment. Its journal extends that service function into print: locally produced clinical and nursing research, published where the region's practitioners can read and use it, and a record of the health problems and practice standards of the Xiamen region as studied by its own medical college.

Publication and Identification

The journal is published in Chinese as Xiamen Yixueyuan Xuebao, sponsored by Xiamen Medical College. No ISSN was attested in the sources consulted, so none is stated here. Care is needed to distinguish this college from the School of Medicine of Xiamen University, a separate and older institution founded in 1996 within Xiamen University, with its own hospitals and publications; the similarly named institutions coexist in the same city, and this journal belongs solely to Xiamen Medical College, the public undergraduate medical college in Jimei District.

Readers and Scholarly Use

The journal's readers are clinicians, nurses, pharmacists and dental practitioners in Fujian, together with the college's own teaching staff and students. For researchers of Chinese medical education, it documents the newest stage of a familiar story: a missionary-era medical school, carried through junior-college decades, becoming an undergraduate institution and building the scholarly apparatus — departments, affiliated teaching hospitals and a journal — that undergraduate status entails. Its issues are primary evidence of what a young city medical college researches first as it establishes itself.

The breadth of the college's clinical network is the journal's practical foundation. Two directly affiliated hospitals, two non-directly affiliated hospitals, sixteen teaching hospitals and more than one hundred and seventy off-campus practice bases mean that the college's students and teachers encounter patients across Xiamen, Quanzhou and the wider southern Fujian region, in general, dental, children's and psychiatric settings among others. Research questions arising across so dispersed a network — in primary care, community nursing, pharmacy practice and dental treatment — are exactly the subjects of the journal's stated coverage, and the network gives its authors the case material and clinical data on which such articles depend.

Standing and Outlook

The Journal of Xiamen Medical College stands as the publishing voice of Fujian's youngest undergraduate medical institution, heir to a Gulangyu medical tradition reaching back to the turn of the twentieth century and to the 1924 missionary-era training described in its listing. With fifteen undergraduate majors and a growing affiliated-hospital base, the college's research output can be expected to grow, and its journal — covering clinical medicine, nursing, pharmacy and oral medicine from Xiamen — to grow with it as the city's only public medical undergraduate institution matures.