Founded in 1892, Nanjing Gulou Hospital, is one of the earliest western
medical hospitals in China. It was founded by Dr. William Edward
Macklin, M.D., Disciples (Canada) Mission to China, with the assistance
of Prof. Frank Eugene Meigs, the Curch of Christ (USA), and the local
Nanjing community. At its early stage of establishment, the hospital
took "Love, Kindness and Public Service" as its philosophy and "No
prejudice to patients as the first priority", proposed by Macklin, as an
aspiration. However, due to the uneven distribution of medical
resources, neglect of humanities in China's medical education, among
other reasons, Chinese public hospitals showed a lack of human concern
over a long period of time. In 2004, the president of Gulou Hospital,
Ding Yitao, took humanism as a breakthrough point, and first proposed
the missing of honoring the hospital's heritage of humanism and building
the best humanistic hospital. At a high level, the strategic
transformation is implemented along three dimensions: building a
memorial hall to honor the heritage of humanistic spirit of Gulou
Hospital, launching an expansion project for the hospital that improves
availability and quality of health care, as well as transforming
hospital management, operation and performance evaluation that stimulate
the cultural consciousness of all employees and create a humanistic
hospital. Since Gulou Hospital embarked on the journal to build the best
humanistic hospital in China, it has generated positive results in
terms of patient attraction and satisfaction level. Gulou Hospital has
become an exemplar of modern, humanistic hospital in China and received
many awards. However, going forward, the hospital faces mounting
challenges. How to further deepening the reform and engage all
employees? Will Gulou Hospital's core competency sustain into the future
and continues to enable the hospital to gain a strong foothold in the
increasingly crowded healthcare market?