The department of nursing is one of the national-level bases that train qualified personnel who are engaged in nursing administration, nursing education, advanced clinical nursing, nursing research, community nursing and health protecting & caring.

    Since being established in 1987, the department has developed rapidly. Four levels of teaching programs are offered now: Master of Science in Nursing, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, associate bachelor degrees and continuing educating program. By the end of 2002, 104 master¡¯s, 160 bachelor¡¯s and 130 associate bachelor¡¯s degrees students had graduated from this department. The present enrolment of the department is 192, including 22 master's and 170 undergraduate students. The nurses and technicians graduated from it have been in the frontline to serve various communities and develop the senior nursing project. What deserves some words here is that in the past 10 years 104 students have graduated from the POHNED graduate education project or its extending part in which the department cooperate with Thai Chieng Mai University and 8 key medical universities subordinated Ministry of Public Health of China and is sponsored by American Chinese medical foundation. All of them now have filled in the blank of high-level professionals in the fields of senior nursing education, nursing administration and advanced special nursing in China. Besides, it has found out an effective way suitable for the situation of China to train jointly high-level professionals in nursing.

    The department also receives in-service nurses to improve their skills, especially in the Northwest area. For example, the successional 10 paramedic teachers¡¯ scholarship training classes, one of the continuing educating projects sponsored by American Chinese medical foundation, have brought up more than 200 nursing staff for the Northwest. The 5 full-nursing and nursing administration classes have brought up over 400 staff cooperated with the nursing associations of some provinces or municipalities. All of these have offered the good opportunities for the teachers majored in nursing and clinical staff to improve their skills. And from these activities, the students can get the new points, new knowledge and new technology related with nursing. So the projects of continuing education are helpful to the development of medical industry in the Northwest area. Furthermore, the department has got the good reputation in the society through it.

    Currently, there are 25 faculty members in the department, of whom 7 professors or associate professors, 12 lectures, 5 teaching assistants and 1 lab assistant. The young members are the majority, accounting for about 70%, of whom 60% have earned Master's degrees. All of teachers are now actively engaged in the present curriculum and research. Studied or being trained overseas, most of them have had the abundant professional knowledge and strong teaching abilities. And they are serving as the editorials of many nursing magazines, meanwhile joining in writing many kinds of instruction manuals and reference materials planned by nation.

    Equipped with many kinds of teaching models and auxiliary facilities, the department teaching laboratory has reached the A-grade of the university-level. Several simulation wards are set up according to specialized departments, such as nursing laboratories and practicing rooms of department of internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, gynecology, demonstrating rooms of serious-disease guarding and basic nursing, and individual study center. Graceful and comfortable environment is provided to the graduate teaching center. Furnished with video tape recorder, camera, multimedia, etc. the discussing rooms, reading rooms and lecture rooms can provide fast and precise measurement for teaching and research work. Additionally, they can also use 30 PCs in the computer center. The department library has owned a newly nursing-related collection of about 5,000 volumes of professional books, about 100 nursing magazines or journals in Chinese or foreign languages.

    The researching activities of this department are vigorous. The teaching faculty and research staff are actively engaged in the research of nursing theories, their applications and development of high technologies. In the past years, some of them have won a bid of 2 subjects given by Xi¡¯an Jiaotong University which grant them received totally up to 32,000 (RMB), and 3 subjects given by the college research funds amounted up to about 30,000 (RMB). Over the years, the faculty of this department has published 30 papers and won 91 prizes, of which 85% are in key periodicals. They participate actively in the works of writing the teaching and reference books. Over 23 textbooks, instructional manuals and reference books, totally about 2,300,000 words, have been written, such as teaching materials of undergraduate courses planned by Ministry of Public Health, teaching materials of continuing education, the series of modern-nursing-manuals books cooperated with Beijing Medical University medical & Peking Union Medical College united publishing house, and paramedical materials in addition.

    The department has several long-term educational collaborative projects with U.S.A., Canada and Thailand; such as the nursing graduate education project with American Chinese medical foundation and the paramedic teachers¡¯ scholarship training project. Lately the chairman of the World Old-caring Association and some representatives coming from the Asian-Pacific area hold the old-caring seminar, trained a group of members of the World Old-caring Association, and set up an old-caring training project which offered the subsidy of 40,000(RMB) to the department in order to train the nursing staff for the old. It never happened in the Northwest area before. Several international or domestic famous experts have regularly been invited to give lectures here. Constantly the department also sends students to study abroad in Japan, Canada, U.S.A., Australian, Thai, Singaporean and other places. All of these academic exchanges have greatly enriched its academic life and improved the international influence of the nursing department.