Geriatrics

Renji Hospital’s Department of Geriatrics regards Professor Huang Mingxin, former president of Renji Hospital, as the founder of the discipline. In 1992, Professor Bao Yanxi established the department and also served as its first director. The department’s previous directors were Professor Lu Huihua and Professor Fang Ningyuan; its current director is Professor Hu Yaomin. The department is currently located across Renji Hospital’s Eastern, Western, and Southern campuses, with 159 beds in total, including 8 ICU beds. It has 32 physicians, including 1 doctoral supervisor and 3 master’s supervisors. The nursing team has 128 members, and there are 4 medical technicians. Renji Hospital’s Department of Geriatrics is Shanghai’s first doctoral- and master’s-degree-granting institution in geriatrics and one of the first national training bases for geriatric medicine specialists. Over the years, it has achieved outstanding results in research and clinical practice in geriatric hypertension and critical illness in older adults; in recent years, it has also developed distinctive new subspecialties in sarcopenia, geriatric endocrine and metabolic diseases, osteoporosis, geriatric nutrition, and the diagnosis and treatment of geriatric multimorbidity.

Clinical Features Since its establishment, the department has consistently emphasized integrating individual development with discipline development; its talent-development approach combines recruitment and training, strengthens the development of young talent, and builds a medical and nursing team with a high level of ideological awareness and a spirit of dedication. It adheres to the principle of “putting patients first, taking quality as the foundation, ensuring standardized quality internally, presenting a civilized image externally, and strengthening the department through education and research,” and promotes the development of subspecialty teams. In addition to specialty outpatient clinics for geriatric diseases, hypertension, and other conditions, the department has added outpatient clinics for sarcopenia, comprehensive geriatric assessment, geriatric multimorbidity, geriatric endocrinology, geriatric osteoporosis, and geriatric cardiovascular diseases, so as to meet the healthcare needs of an aging society to the greatest extent, while fully completing the subspecialty structure of the discipline and laying the foundation for building a first-class geriatric medicine center with distinctive characteristics. Clinically, the department has moved beyond the single-disease model of diagnosis and treatment and emphasizes multidisciplinary collaboration and patient-centered care, establishing clinical services centered on multimorbidity management, polypharmacy management, and whole-person care. Along with urban development, the department has also established a dedicated health-management team to undertake medical-support duties for various large-scale events and summits, thereby actively serving society.

Educational and Research Features In 2021, the department undertook the first National Geriatric Medicine Talent Training Program, providing talent for key geriatric physicians and institutions integrating medical care with elderly care. It has also actively advanced discipline development and established standardized-training and residency-training teaching systems with distinctive geriatric characteristics. The department regularly conducts training in emergency diagnosis and treatment standards, professional learning sessions, case discussions, and research training, helping young talent develop rapidly. It has established subspecialty groups for sarcopenia, geriatric multimorbidity, geriatric hypertension, geriatric critical illness, geriatric osteoporosis, geriatric endocrinology, and clinical nutrition, with tiered development based on a PI responsibility system＋a competitive appointment system, while actively strengthening and advancing cooperation with renowned research institutes in China and abroad. At present, disease-specific cohort research databases have been established for sarcopenia and geriatric multimorbidity; in the future, a disease-specific big-data repository will also be developed to enable the sharing of regional healthcare resources and data and to improve healthcare-service capacity and research output.

Cultural Development The department places emphasis on ideological and political work and team building. It regularly conducts focused study sessions on medical humanities education, professional-conduct development, and other topics, actively participates in public-welfare activities, and consistently upholds theprinciple that medical and nursing personnel are one family, thereby strengthening teamwork among colleagues. In 2021, the department designed and produced its emblem and established a cultural calling card for the department, making it more cohesive and united. It also created an official WeChat account platform to develop the department’s cultural brand both online and offline. The emblem symbolizes that every medical and nursing professional in Renji Hospital’s Department of Geriatrics adheres to theprinciple of “putting patients first” and accompanies, helps, and heals patients with dedication and love. Relying on Renji Hospital’s high-quality disciplinary platform and taking “striving and working hard” as the main theme for the future, all medical and nursing personnel will move forward hand in hand, make the most of their youth, and look ahead to a promising future.