Zhou Liangfu, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said young doctors suffer from meager pay, which has led some med students to switch to related but different fields after graduating.
Zhou usually tells his students that practicing medicine means letting go of materialistic needs and not thinking about how much money one can make.
"They need to endure hardship and hone their skills first," Zhou said.
But for some who cannot stand to wait too long, this life and death hardship is wearing them out.
Medical schools are receiving students with lower college entrance exam grades compared with several years ago. This has led some schools to lower their enrollment thresholds, allowing students with below-average marks to attend prestigious medical schools.
In China's competitive national college entrance exam system, it is a signal that fewer top students have chosen to practice medicine.
This means the public may risk getting treatment from second-class students in the future.
"I do not object to top students going into finance or turning into civil servants, but if the best students can't become doctors or medical professors, it is a tragedy for our nation," Peng said.
Residential building collapses in E China's Ningbo
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