Shanghai reports an 8% jump in the number of nurses

Shanghai has a total of 111,300 nurses, a jump of 8 percent from 2020, following measures taken by the local government to promote the development of nursing services and health care quality.

According to the Shanghai Health Commission, 44 percent of nurses are under the age of 30, and 0.7 percent have postgraduate degrees.

The commission was speaking ahead of International Nurses' Day on Friday.

The city's doctor-to-nurse ratio is 1:1.25, which is greater than the national level but still far lower than the international level of 1:2.7.

The commission said it was keen to promote nursing and the training of nurses and intends to establish an academic promotion system to encourage and improve the quality and number of nurses.

Ahead of Nurses' Day, 30 outstanding nurses were recognized for their professional performance, dedication to their work and medical skills.

Ti Gong

Zhang Zuoyan of Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital is one of the outstanding nurses who were honored on Thursday.

"I work as a nurse in the intensive care unit, which has the most critical patients," Zhang, who has been a nurse for 35 years, said. "We are fighting death every day."

Zhang was on the front lines of a three-year anti-coronavirus campaign, serving at Leishenshan Hospital, a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, which was then the epicenter.

"I led my team to provide high-quality, patient-centered care to each patient during my 52-day shift at Leishenshan Hospital.

"There were no deaths among the 116 patients in our section, and no nurses on my team were down with coronavirus."

After returning from Wuhan, she was assigned to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center to serve COVID-19 patients. Last year, at the height of the pandemic, she was sent to various hospital branches to ensure nursing quality and department management.

Ti Gong