Changzheng Hospital of Naval Medical University is a Grade 3, Class A general hospital integrating medical care, teaching and research. Its predecessor was the Paulun Hospital, founded in 1900 by the German physician Dr. Erich Paulun, and it has been known to the public as Shanghai Changzheng Hospital since 1966.

The hospital has a long and eventful history. In 1930 the Paulun Hospital was renamed the Hospital Affiliated to National Tongji University, and in 1948 it became the Sino-American Hospital. In October 1955, by an order signed by Marshal Peng Dehuai, then Minister of National Defense, it was reorganized as the Shanghai Emergency Surgery Hospital. In September 1958 it became the Second Affiliated Hospital of the Second Military Medical University (today Naval Medical University), and in September 1966, with the approval of the Shanghai government, it took the public name Shanghai Changzheng Hospital. In the Fudan ranking for 2023 it is placed in the A tier.

The hospital has a full range of disciplines, with 47 departments, including 35 clinical departments and 12 diagnostic departments, and 20 clinical teaching and research sections. It has 28 doctoral and 33 master’s programs and a postdoctoral station in clinical medicine. It has 10 national key disciplines, 4 military medical research institutes, 6 military specialized medical technology centers, 2 Shanghai leading key disciplines and 2 Shanghai clinical medical centers, and it is a military key laboratory of laboratory diagnosis and a national drug clinical research base.

The hospital has six traditional strengths: orthopedics, neurosurgery, nephrology, urology, plastic surgery and emergency medicine. It has also developed newer specialties in organ transplantation, minimally invasive treatment, orbital tumors, early diagnosis and treatment of cancer, myeloma and lymphoma, sleep disorders, diabetes and osteoporosis, fungal diseases, surgical injuries, and carotid stenosis and aortic aneurysms. Its achievements in clinical care have won dozens of medical awards, including more than 30 major military and Shanghai awards, and it has won second prizes of the National Science and Technology Progress Award.

The hospital’s 38-story modern ward building has a rooftop helipad. It has advanced equipment including MRI, DSA and multi-slice CT, fully purified operating rooms, laminar-flow wards and intensive care units, as well as a remote consultation center. Pre-hospital emergency care, in-hospital emergency care and the ICU are linked into one emergency system for peacetime and wartime, able to treat large numbers of casualties around the clock.

The hospital staff carry out the historic mission of serving the army and the soldiers, keep in mind the tenet of “healing the wounded and rescuing the dying, serving both the army and the people”, and carry forward the “Changzheng Spirit” of “hard work, love for the people and dedication, unity and harmony, and the courage to be the best”. The hospital has been named a National Model Unit for Supporting the Army and Cherishing the People and a National Advanced Unit in Hospital Culture Building, and has produced many model figures, such as the “model army doctor” Lü Shicai.

Motto: Virtue First, Excellence in Skill

Cover photo by N509FZ, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.