THE resignation of a famous Shenzhen Children’s Hospital pediatrician has sparked heated public discussion about the high resignation rate of pediatric medical workers, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

    The doctor, surnamed Pei, has tens of thousands of followers on social media and was one of the leading pediatricians at Shenzhen Children’s Hospital after 12 years of work.

    His online articles are popular and have attracted 410,000 followers on Weibo and 120,000 followers to his WeChat subscription account. Pei’s Weibo posts generated over 200 million page views last year.

    “The value of me being a popular educational author is higher than me being a doctor,” Pei said.

    A total of 36 pediatricians and 139 pediatric nurses have resigned from Shenzhen Children’s Hospital from 2011 to 2015, with high pressure and low pay being the main reason, according to the report.

    The situation is similar in most large cities nationwide. Zhong Shan, president of Shenzhen Children’s Hospital, said pediatric medical workers are devoted to their work, but often unsatisfied.

    He said that the mismatch of difficulty of the job versus the reward of the work meant many resigned. He also said few universities in China offer pediatrics as a major, meaning fresh recruits are hard to come by.

    Sun Xizhuo, president of Shenzhen Luohu Hospital Group, said hospitals would be able to keep pediatricians if salaries were raised, and the government should also increase welfare for pediatric medical staff.

    “The general practitioners based in community health centers should improve their ability to treat children to ease the growing demand for pediatricians in Shenzhen,” said Sun.

    Shenzhen plans to build three more children’s hospitals in the coming five years, adding 2,500 inpatient beds.

    The government also encourages hospitals to raise the salaries for pediatric medical workers to prevent the loss of staff, according to the report.

    There are over 60,000 pediatricians nationwide, with over 200,000 vacancies.

    (Zhang Yang)