Exploration and Practice of Approaches to Fostering the Innovative Capacity of Medical Undergraduates via Open Laboratories: Based on the “4215” Model

Abstract

Against the macro background of constructing a high-quality education system during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, further advancing the Healthy China Strategy, and realizing the integrated development of education, science and technology, and talents, strengthening the cultivation of high-level innovative medical talents serves as a strategic fulcrum for supporting the high-quality development of regional health undertakings and consolidating the foundation of building a great modern socialist country. Local medical universities generally face practical obstacles in cultivating students’ innovative ability via open laboratories, including inadequate open sharing of resources, insufficient coordination of management systems, weak teachers’ ability in innovative guidance, and insufficient internal motivation of students for active exploration. This paper constructs and systematically elaborates the “4215” operation mode for open laboratories. Centered on building one multi-level collaborative feedback platform, the mode focuses on four stakeholders: university administrators, laboratory managers, teachers and students. It promotes two-way reform between the resource supply side and student demand side, and carries out five core supporting measures: precise supply and optimized sharing of resources, improvement of teachers’ innovative guidance capacity, reconstruction of institutional standards for laboratory opening, incentives for students’ inquiry-based learning, as well as full-cycle digital supervision, evaluation, feedback and continuous improvement. Consistent with the policy orientation of innovative development of medical education led by the New Medicine Initiative and the open sharing of university laboratories, this mode provides a theoretically profound and operable action framework for local medical universities to systematically improve medical undergraduates’ innovative practical ability relying on open laboratories.