The brains of the operation

Working in the field

Despite his renown and privileged position at one of China's best hospitals, Zhang is no stranger to working in the field. When a devastating earthquake struck Wenchuan, Sichuan province, in 2008, he led the first medical relief team from Beijing to arrive in the disaster zone, where he worked with local medics, dealing with about 300 patients who'd sustained craniocerebral injuries.

Talking about his future plans, Zhang says he wants to develop ways of dealing with conditions that are currently considered untreatable, and to achieve better surgical results while minimizing risks and side effects. However, his overriding concern is to overcome the challenges inherent in the doctor-patient relationship.

"Doctors save lives and deserve respect. But patients also deserve respect while they are being treated - two-way respect and communication on equal terms are the basic requirements in dealing with the doctor-patient relationship," he says.

It will take time to improve things, and that will require policy support and construction of a new infrastructure to improve the environment in which patients see their doctors, he says.

He believes that doctors' pay should be standardized, because reasonable and transparent economic feedback would indicate respect for their knowledge and efforts. "Some doctors in public hospitals endure high workloads for meager pay. This can tempt some to earn 'gray income' by prescribing medicines from which they can get kickbacks.

"This can lead to things going badly wrong. All physicians and surgeons, no matter if they perform operations or see patients in a clinic, deserve decent payment for their specialist skills, both practical and intellectual."

Having practiced medicine in Morocco and Kenya, Zhang says doctors in Africa enjoy more respect than their Chinese counterparts. He hopes that his efforts and professionalism will help to build trust between patients and doctors, and improve conditions for both groups.