Prof. Shouzhen CHENG
Chairman, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) Committee, Chinese Nursing Association, Mainland China
President, Guangdong Nursing Association, Mainland China
Director, Department of Nursing, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Mainland China

Prof. Cheng has worked for 40 years in the nursing profession. As a nursing expert in respiratory and critical care, she has made great contributions to national and international campaigns of aid, disaster relief, training and developing the nursing services. In 2020, she was among the first to the frontline to fight against COVID-19 in Wuhan and Serbia. She also published articles on COVID-19 in medical journals including the BMJ to share experiences with the world.

In nurses training area, she conducted research programs as the principal investigator on the training of core competences of ICU nurses, which has set up an example of the training of clinical nurse specialists in China. In 2010, she led the nursing team to conduct the first batch of National Clinical Key Specialty Program with grant from the National Health Commission and established the Clinical Nursing College based on the hospital.  The college is composed of 36 nursing specialties, 16 national and 41 provincial accredited training centers for training clinical nurse specialists and arranging their placement nationwide. Till now, it has trained nurses including 18,900 critical care specialists who have played important roles in various clinical context.

Abstract

Development and Transformation of Advanced Practice Nursing

The history of medicine and nursing is also the history of human battling against diseases and disasters. Apart from saving lives and relieving pains, nurses are the main force in the war where they make comprehensive assessment of the disaster, provide full preparation of all the resources as well as seek for cooperation and assistance from the government and the organization.

In the very early days of COVID-19 break-out in Wuhan 2020, the nursing team from the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University rushed to the city in harm’s way. Nurses, especially those specialized in critical care, hemodialysis, intravenous therapy and rehabilitation, have played a significant role in the control and treatment of the disease. They built up quarantine ICU from the general wards rapidly and carried out advanced life support techniques, including mechanical ventilation, closed endotracheal suctioning, prone position ventilation, PiCCO monitoring, continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT), intravenous catheterization, etc., to save lives as well as to find out the best possible methods to care and cure the patients. They performed pulmonary rehabilitation exercise to enhance the early recovery of the COVID-19 patients. They made every effort to fulfill the physical and spiritual needs of the patients and relieve the painful bodies and minds. Besides, they summarized clinical experiences by squeezing whatever available time to explore effective therapies, standardize the procedures, and share the experience with the world in time. Over 61 days, the team had treated 246 severely and critically ill patients, 91% of which were either discharged or transferred from the quarantine ICU without a single incident of staff infection.

back