The Local and Rural Experience in China: Guilin

When flying into Guilin, one of the most popular Chinese cities for tourism, we were immediately struck by the beauty of the mountain formations. These formations are actually limestone karst hills formed more than 200 million years ago when the oceans receded from this area.

The delegation began the program in Guilin with a cultural day of traveling down the Li River on a flat bottom boat cruise. The river trip winded through small villages and the mountain formations. We saw water buffalo, caves, local fishermen, farmers, and children along the waterfront. We had the opportunity to visit a local village and tour a woman’s home. The home was a typical construction for the poor villagers who live in the countryside. The three-room home was made of brick and had dirt floors. As you step into the back of the home, there was an open-air kitchen. The utensils were crude and the woman cooked over a fire pit. The woman was selling hand made embroidery balls, her way of making an income.

The professional program offered a different perspective on healthcare delivery and medical record documentation from our experience in Beijing. We toured a Guilin hospital in the morning and a local clinic and health center in the afternoon. The hospital is beginning to implement computerized methods to capture health information for departmental services. Physicians have the ability to access diagnostic reports from decentralized locations on patient units. The hospital still prints out paper records and stores medical records in vertical file formats using a card catalogue system for retrieval. The local health center and clinic serviced the rural areas and was responsible for overseeing physicians who go out to practice in the villages. They deliver approximately 600 babies a year. There was a baby born while we were visiting. Although medical transcription roles don’t exist in China, the Chinese professionals were very interested in learning more about how this process can improve documentation.