The primary history of the development of this course

The start of the course of otolaryngology traces back to the middle 19^th century, when otology, rhinology, and laryngology were merged into an independent secondary subject discipline of clinical medicine. In 1952,the Eye and ENT Hospital of Shanghai First Medical School was founded. The first director of the hospital and the chief of the department of Otolaryngology was Prof. Hu Zhao-lian. In 1955, the teaching and research group of otolaryngology was founded. In the following decades, the course of otolaryngology was gradually developed and formed its instruction model and content, initially established three teaching steps, that is, theory, demonstration and practice.

The development of the course of otolaryngology involved responsibilities. When the Shanghai Medical School started to enroll seven-year program medical students in 1988, the Chief Wang Zheng-min led the teaching and research group of otolaryngology which was in charge of teaching otolaryngology to both the five-year program and seven-year program medical students, as well as the ones from five other departments of medical schools. At that time, besides of the primary teaching tasks borne by the Eye and ENT Hospital, other departments of otolaryngology of Zhongshan Hospital, Huashan Hospital, Shanghai No.1 Hospital and Huadong Hospital provided teaching and tutoring as well. Each hospital had its autonomy to choose the text books and arrange examinations, training, and internship. The five-year program text book Otolaryngology was under Prof. Wang Zheng-min’s general editorship, and so were many other books which were used as reference, enriched the teaching content, as well as benefitted teachers and students.

The development of the course of otolaryngology also included difficulties. In clinical practice, the reform of tutoring the interns hit obstacles when teachers tried to balance the inpatient and outpatient training so as to provide more opportunities for the students to see, exam, treat different kinds of diseases. The solution was to arrange surgeons to give a full-time tutoring and pay attention to the teaching when the teachers and students went the rounds of the wards.

With the highly development of scientific technology and interdisciplinary cooperation, the category of otolaryngology was enlarged, and its content was enriched. Projectors, audio and visual text books, as well as multimedia teaching materials effectively unified picture, literature, sound, and image, improving the teaching outcome.

In 2002, the teaching and research group of otolaryngology changed its name into the department of otolaryngology. Prof. Wang Zheng-min and Prof. Zheng Chun-quan were the dean and deputy dean, respectively. The advantages of human and material resources from different departments of otolaryngology of Eye and ENT Hospital, Zhongshan Hospital, Huashan Hospital, and Huadong Hospital were gathered. A series of standardized teaching measures was adopted, including unified outlines, text books, and examinations, etc. Furthermore, the standardized teaching measures were laid on the foundation built by the audio and visual medical text books chief edited by Prof. Wang Zheng-min, the PPTs of otolaryngology chief edited by Prof. Zheng Chun-quan, the multimedia teaching materials, as well as the publishment of the Eye and ENT Examinations and Answers. In 2004, the bilingual Chinese-English courses were taught to the seven-year program medical students. In 2008, these bilingual courses were given to the eight-year program. The clinical practices were also developed from rotation to selection. The students’ initiative was motivated.