Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    A HOSPITAL in Shenzhen’s Nanshan District signed a cooperation deal with a U.S. medical school yesterday to help the hospital build a modern trauma and critical care center.

    Shenzhen Sixth People’s Hospital (Nanshan Hospital) will send a team of 40 doctors, nurses and administrators to the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) for training at their trauma center and intensive care unit (ICU) during the next two years, said Luo Xudong, president of the Shenzhen hospital. USC will also send medical professionals to Nanshan Hospital to help improve the hospital’s services.

    “Through this partnership, a select group of our trauma and emergency medicine team will be spending time here in Shenzhen to help guide the reorganization and restructuring of the hospital’s trauma program,” said Thomas Jackiewicz, senior vice president and CEO of the Keck School.

    “We’ll be sharing our protocols, best practices and techniques for providing high-quality care to critically ill patients, and we’ll be providing support and direction as Nanshan Hospital builds its trauma center,” he continued.

    Nanshan Hospital will set aside 4,000 square meters of its new building for the future trauma and critical care center and aims to increase its number of ICU beds to 200.

    The Keck School of Medicine at USC is an internationally recognized leader in academic, research and clinical excellence and includes a renowned medical school, one of the first eight original comprehensive cancer centers in the United States, three hospitals and more than 40 outpatient facilities, according to Jackiewicz.

    The Keck School of Medicine at USC’s trauma and emergency treatment center ranks third in U.S. medical services, and beds at its trauma centers and intensive care units take up 40 percent of the trauma and emergency treatment center’s total, according to materials provided by Nanshan Hospital.

    “Trauma and injuries remain the No. 1 problem all over the world. In China, there are more than 275,000 deaths due to car accidents every year,” said Demetrios Demetriades, director of the USC division of acute care surgery. “It has been shown that the introduction of trauma centers into countries that previously did not have them can reduce deaths [by] 20 to 30 percent.”