Table 2.

History of family medicine in China.

Time	Major events
Late 1980s	The concept of family medicine (FM) was officially introduced into China.1
Early 1990s	Several pilot projects in family medicine were conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang. These had no standard management and no accessible evaluation results.
1997	The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council launched a key strategy to speed up FM education and the training of GPs.
1998	The Ministry of Health (MoH) and nine other ministries commented on the development of Urban Community Health Services (CHS); they wanted to establish a FM education system.
1999	Further directives were issued by the MoH on the development of FM education. The national FM training centre was established by the Capital University of Medical Science in Beijing.2
	National curricula for the GP residency training programme and the GP training in service programme were designed at the National FM Education Working Conference. Training standards and requirements were listed.
	FM formally became an academic discipline.4
2000	Four-year GP residency training projects were started in Shanghai and Zhejiang. In total there were 74 trainees. Additionally a 3-year GP residency training project was started in Beijing with 300 trainees.4
2001	The GP training-in-service programme started. This had been listed as a key intervention by the MoH.
2002	The MoH and 10 other ministries issued more directives/guidance on the more rapid provision of urban CHS.
Aug. 2002	The national FM training centre created a FM training network, based on the provincial FM training centres in 30 provinces (not Hainan or Tibet).
	The GP training-in-service programme was delivered in 17 provinces and municipalities with >20 000 trainees.
	The China Medical Association and The Chinese Medical Doctor Association both founded FM divisions/branches.
2003	A sample survey in seven provinces and four municipalities showed that 32% of doctors in CHS centres and 43% of doctors in the CHS stations had participated in the GP training-in-service programme.
2004	The GP training-in-service programme had been conducted in 28 provinces and municipalities. Sixty-four out of the 74 four-year FM residents from the training projects in Shanghai and Zhejiang were awarded completion training certificates.
2005	The national FM training guideline for residency programmes was changed from a 4-year course to a 3-year one.
2006	National revised curricula were published for FM residency training, which changed the 4-year training period into 3-year course.
	A nationwide FM training base was organised and evaluated by MoH.
2007	Four national FM training curricula were newly published, which included a 500-training hour curricula for GP in service programme, a 10-month curricula for key GPs in service programme, a 240-training hour curricula for the nurses in community, and a 40-training hour curricula for health managers.
	Twenty-two hospitals were recognised by the MoH as the national GP training bases with totally training ability of 538 trainees per year.