Founded in 1904 as the Shanghai Isolation Hospital for Westerners, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital is a large Grade 3, Class A general hospital with more than a century of history. It became an affiliated hospital of Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2002 and of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in 2022, and it is known as the birthplace of ultrasound diagnosis in China and the cradle of limb replantation in the world.

In February 2021 the former East Campus of Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital was formally merged into the hospital, opening a new chapter of integrated, high-quality development. Today the hospital has two campuses, Xuhui and Lingang, with 2,556 approved beds (3,426 authorized), of which 1,956 are at the Xuhui campus and 600 at the Lingang campus, and 51 clinical and medical technology departments. In the past five years its annual outpatient and emergency visits have exceeded 5.3 million at their peak, annual discharges have reached nearly 180,000, and inpatient operations have exceeded 120,000 a year.

The hospital has been named a National Civilized Unit for six consecutive terms over 19 years, and has received an “all A” rating in the performance appraisal of Shanghai municipal hospitals for 18 years in a row. Its highest positions include 33rd in the national performance appraisal of tertiary public hospitals, 25th in the China Hospital Science and Technology Evaluation, and 20th in the Best Hospitals ranking of the Fudan University Hospital Management Institute, where its orthopedics, endocrinology and metabolism, otorhinolaryngology–head and neck surgery and ultrasound medicine rank among the top ten in the country. In the Fudan ranking for 2023 the hospital is placed in the A+++ tier.

The hospital has a proud record of medical firsts. In 1958 Professor Zhou Yongchang and his colleagues founded ultrasound medicine here. In 1963 Professors Chen Zhongwei, Qian Yunqing and their team performed the world’s first successful replantation of a severed limb. In 1978 Professor Yu Zhongjia and his colleagues developed and performed the reconstruction of a hand with total loss of all fingers, known around the world as the birth of the “Chinese hand”, which won the national first prize for invention. More recently, its endocrinology department established the world’s first normal reference values for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and was the first to propose time in range (TIR) as a new indicator of blood glucose control, while its ENT department pioneered semicircular canal occlusion for intractable vertigo and Ménière’s disease.

In 2022 the hospital was approved as the National Orthopedic Medical Center. It has 9 national key clinical specialties: orthopedics, endocrinology and metabolism, otorhinolaryngology, medical imaging, sports medicine, emergency medicine, trauma surgery, joint surgery and foot and ankle surgery, and 3 national key disciplines: orthopedic surgery, endocrinology and metabolism, and cardiology. It is home to the Shanghai Institute of Microsurgery on Extremities, the Shanghai Diabetes Institute and the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Diabetes Mellitus, among other research platforms, and is a partner hospital of the All-China Sports Federation for the Chinese national teams.

Over the years the hospital has won 309 national, provincial, ministerial and municipal research awards, including, as the first institution, one national first prize for invention and nine second prizes of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. In 2023 it published 540 papers indexed by SCI/EI. Professor Chen Zhongwei was elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980 for his work on limb replantation; Professor Xiang Kunsan was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2003 for diabetes genetics; and Professor Jia Weiping was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2021 for her achievements in diabetes prevention and treatment.

As a doctoral and postdoctoral training base of Shanghai Jiaotong University, the hospital has 138 doctoral supervisors and 179 master’s supervisors. In 2017 it passed the international simulation program accreditation of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

The hospital also works to bring high-quality care to other regions. It began building the Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital medical group in 2000, and it co-builds Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Fujian and Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Anhui with the provincial governments as national regional medical centers for trauma.

Upholding the tenet of “patients first, quality first”, the hospital has received honors such as the National Advanced Collective of the Health System and the National May Day Labor Award, and it is working toward its goal of becoming “an international first-class medical center”.

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