Rheumatology

The rheumatology specialty at Shandong University Qilu Hospital was established in 1987 and has gradually developed into a complete system integrating medical care, teaching, and research, in which the specialty outpatient clinic, wards, and rheumatology laboratory support one another, with complete facilities for diagnosis and treatment. The Department of Rheumatology has a strong staff lineup, with a well-balanced clinical and medical-technical complement. The Department of Rheumatology currently has 20 medical and technical personnel, including 5 medical personnel with senior professional titles, 5 with associate senior professional titles, 3 doctoral supervisors, and 7 master’s supervisors. There are 8 attending physicians and supervising laboratory technologists, and 5 resident physicians. Twelve hold doctoral degrees, and 7 are returnees from overseas study. According to the needs of clinical work and development, it is divided into four subspecialties— systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatic bone disease, and clinical pathology— forming different technical teams. There are two nursing units, a rheumatology outpatient unit and a ward; the ward has 23 nursing personnel and the outpatient clinic has 2 nursing personnel, all with junior-college or bachelor’s degrees. The rheumatology laboratory is the base for the department’s medical care and research. It has 1 chief technologist, 1 deputy chief technologist, 1 supervising technologist, and 1 technician. Five members of the department hold positions in academic organizations at home and abroad, including chair, vice chair, standing committee member, council member, and journal editorial board member. They have undertaken multiple national- and provincial-level continuing medical education programs and training courses, substantially improving the level of clinical diagnosis and treatment of rheumatic diseases.

The department has formulated a talent-training plan. Physicians at all levels are able to master the corresponding professional techniques, forming a highly educated, high-level technical team led by senior staff mentoring new staff, consisting mainly of young and middle-aged personnel, with a rational echelon and comprehensive technical capabilities, and possessing a strong ability to manage difficult and critically ill cases. This discipline has established stable platforms for scientific research cooperation and academic exchange with the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, King’s College London in the United Kingdom, and others. National new-drug clinical research is a distinctive feature of our department. Our department has been qualified as a national new-drug clinical research base since 2001; all physicians have received training in clinical drug trials and obtained qualification certificates. We have participated in more than 30 domestic and international multicenter clinical trials. In particular, in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, we were among the first in China to participate in international multicenter clinical drug trials and clinical applications of various biologic agents (anti-tumor necrosis factor, anti-IL-6 and anti-IL-1 monoclonal antibodies, and CTLA-4) and small-molecule compounds (JAK inhibitors) for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis; we also participated in domestic multicenter Phase II and Phase III clinical drug trials of iguratimod for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. These clinical studies all passed routine inspections and audits conducted by the National Medical Products Administration. These new-drug verifications improved our ability to observe and assess the disease conditions of RA, AS, and SLE, and also benefited numerous patients with rheumatic diseases.

The Department of Rheumatology undertakes the medical teaching, clinical observation, and internship tasks for undergraduates, graduate students, 7-year-program students, 8-year-program students, and international student classes of Shandong University School of Medicine. Our specialty is a standardized residency training base in Shandong Province; each year, it trains more than 50 general practitioners and rheumatology specialists, and continuously undertakes rheumatology specialty training for physicians from various cities and prefectures in Shandong Province, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and other regions, cultivating a large number of rheumatology and immunology professionals for China.

The rheumatology laboratory conducts testing of clinical rheumatology and immunology items, diagnosis of rheumatic disease-related bone diseases, clinical pathology work, and multiple basic research projects. It is a standard laboratory that was rated qualified in the National External Quality Assessment of Autoantibody Testing for four consecutive years (2008-2012). Clinical specimens received on working days have electronic reports completed and sent on the same day, greatly facilitating patients; the annual average is more than 50,000 test items.

While completing a large number of autoantibody testing tasks, using the rheumatology laboratory as its base, the technical team has undertaken and completed more than 20 national- and provincial-level projects, including 2 subprojects of the National 11th Five-Year Plan, 1 Ministry of Health project, and 3 National Natural Science Foundation of China projects. It has received 10 scientific research achievement awards, including 1 third prize of the Chinese Medical Science and Technology Award, 5 provincial- and ministerial-level awards, and 4 department- and bureau-level awards. It holds 4 national patents. In the past 3 years, more than 40 papers have been published in professional journals in China and abroad as first or corresponding author, including 30 indexed by SCI. In the past 5 years, 15 monographs of various types have been published, and distinctive expertise has been developed in areas including thrombocytopenia and cardiovascular lesions in systemic lupus erythematosus, epidemiological surveys of GIOP, and integrated treatment of rehabilitation and education for patients with arthritis.