China’s ophthalmology was founded in 1953 by Prof. Chen Yaozhen (Eugene Chan), one of the founding fathers of modern ophthalmology. Ophthalmology has played an important part in clinical courses in tertiary medical education, including eye anatomy and physiology, pathogenesis of common eye diseases leading to blindness, disease prevention, cure and its prognosis. Now our ophthalmology is a leading figure in China concerning the scope, academic level, talent cultivation, quality of our faculty, technical strength, medical services, curriculum design, and ophthalmic equipment. Ophthalmology is an indispensable part in clinical studies. Eye diseases, compared to other diseases, have higher frequency of occurrence and are considered as one of the diseases that exert greatest influence on people’s daily life. Diagnoses of eye diseases largely depend on specialized equipment and require a great deal of time and practices. Eyeball belongs to nerve tissue and eye diseases are closely related to systemic diseases. For instance, diseases in relation to circulatory system, central nerve system and internal secretion have particular symptoms in our eyes. Therefore, a good command of the cause for diseases, the clinical pathology, diagnoses and preventive measures are of significance for students majoring in medicine if they want to acquire more basic medical knowledge and improve their clinical skills. 

Our ophthalmology has been one of the first fields accepted as national key discipline in China by National Education Committee (now changes its name to Ministry of Education) since 1989. Our ophthalmology possesses unique academic strengths and complete curricula in corneal diseases, glaucoma, cataract, uveitis and corneal refractive surgery in the sense that we not only focus on focal points in our teaching activities, but also employ interesting methods to help students acquire knowledge. We emphasize on “the balance among knowledge, quality and capability” of our students and require that students should improve their clinical skills based on real life situations and knowledge learned at school. The Center readjusts itself according to the improvement of our teaching methods to set up Department of Ophthalmology and Optometry, in charge of teaching and training in the Center. Department of Ophthalmology and Optometry is responsible for teaching management, including all teaching activities within the Center. Under the guidance of leaders, and Education and Teaching Committee, we will better promote the teaching activities in the Center. 

Our faculty has constantly developed. Last year, we recruited ten PhD. supervisors (six were recruited from overseas and four were selected in China). The number of PhD. supervisors reached 54 whereas master supervisors totaled 37. Our faculty members received first-rank prize in the Teaching Competition for Young Teachers in Chinese and the third-rank prize in English. We also received first-rank prize in Teaching Skills, “Excellent Teacher” prize in National Teaching Skills Competition, “Excellent Medical Teacher” in School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University and so on. We have also obtained a great deal of progress and are highly praised by university leaders in academic and international exchanges.