【Words from a Distinguished Teacher】
- Teaching is a process of mutual shaping between teachers and students.
- As a physician, never forget that you are a mirror for your students; as a teacher, never forget that your students are future doctors.
- To embody both physician and teacher is both an honor and a responsibility: it requires a diversified, integrative perspective across medicine, education, and research, as well as a pure and steadfast commitment to quiet, persistent cultivation.
Ye Feng is an attending surgeon, associate professor, and assistant department director in the Department of General Surgery at Ruijin Hospital Affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and serves as teaching coordinator of the Surgical Teaching and Research Section at Ruijin Clinical Medical College.
Growing into the Next Generation of Educators under a Strong Academic Tradition
Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and Ruijin Hospital are renowned for their deep-rooted traditions in medical education. Generations of medical masters have devoted themselves to teaching. Ye Feng often remarks, “I am fortunate to stand at the podium because I stand on the shoulders of my predecessors.” To this day, Professor Kuang Ankun’s teaching philosophy of “spending an hour explaining minor diseases and five minutes on major ones,” and Professor Fu Peibin’s belief that “only by passing on one’s skills and experience to students can one be considered truly successful,” are still widely quoted.
Having grown from student to teacher within this environment, Ye Feng deeply appreciates the rigorous and systematic training he received. Early in his clinical, teaching, and academic career, he was able to participate in highly practical surgeries, engage in discussions with outstanding students, and confront the frontiers of the discipline—experiences that laid a solid foundation for his development as a young clinical educator.
Guided by the principles of goodness, upward aspiration, and continual development, Ruijin Hospital—the largest affiliated teaching hospital of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine—actively encourages distinguished clinicians, scholars, and master teachers to step onto the podium, inspiring young physicians to devote themselves to education and cultivating fertile ground for teaching excellence. As Academician Ning Guang, President of Ruijin Hospital, has emphasized, “The fundamental responsibility of a teacher lies in transmission and respect. To bear the title of ‘teacher’ is to assume the duty of cultivation fully.”
The Surgical Teaching and Research Section, where Ye Feng serves, upholds a proud and longstanding teaching tradition. Under the leadership of Professor Hu Weiguo, Party Secretary of Ruijin Hospital and course director for Surgery, the section has built a comprehensive knowledge framework and a coherent core theoretical system grounded in standardized textbooks, enabling young faculty members to systematically refine, reorganize, and synthesize teaching content across different curricular tracks and textbook editions.
Advancing Through Teaching with Full Commitment
“In a teaching hospital like ours, becoming a teacher is inevitable; learning how to become a good teacher is the real challenge,” Ye Feng observes. From lecturing on theoretical courses to teaching surgical techniques and providing bedside clinical instruction, physicians must balance demanding clinical duties with teaching responsibilities. This process involves both wholehearted dedication to students and continual reflection and self-improvement.
Teaching is a systematic endeavor that extends beyond professional knowledge to include pedagogy, instructional skills, and educational psychology. Reflecting on his early teaching experience, Ye Feng notes that many young clinical educators, though strong in clinical practice and research and passionate about teaching, initially lack formal training in educational theory and teaching practice.
Fortunately, platforms such as the Center for Teaching and Learning Development of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Academic Affairs Office of the School of Medicine, and Ruijin Clinical Medical College provide comprehensive, high-level faculty development support. Through guidance before, during, and after classes, Ye Feng internalized the principle of “student-centered development” and greatly benefited from advances in teaching methodology.
When faced with the wide range of questions raised by students, Ye Feng shares his own understanding openly. Over time, students begin to question or probe further into his explanations. “At that point,” Ye notes, “I realize that my own understanding may not yet be fully adequate, which compels me to return to the textbooks and consult the literature again.” In addition, during brief clinical teaching sessions, he expands on issues encountered in real clinical practice by incorporating recent advances and integrating knowledge from related disciplines. “The process of lesson preparation and responding to students’ questions,” he observes, “also promotes the teacher’s own professional growth. Teaching is a process of mutual shaping between teachers and students.”
When confronted with questions he cannot immediately answer, Ye responds with honesty and openness. “To know what one knows, and to acknowledge what one does not know—this is a fundamental scholarly attitude,” he explains. Given the vast and ever-expanding scope of medical knowledge, no teacher can know everything; candidly acknowledging this reality, he believes, ultimately earns students’ respect.
Ye Feng is committed to refining excellence in classroom teaching. Owing to his solid pedagogical foundation, he has received consistently high evaluations from both students and expert reviewers over multiple years. He won first prize in the medical category at the National Teaching Innovation Contest for College Teachers, becoming the first medical faculty member from Shanghai to achieve this distinction since the competition’s inception 14 years ago, marking a historic breakthrough.
In the context of the New Medical Education initiative, Ye remains steadfast in fulfilling the mission of moral education and talent cultivation. Under the guidance of Professor Hu Weiguo, course director for Surgery, he helped develop an outcome-oriented curriculum-based ideological and political education framework for surgery by integrating educational elements rooted in Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and Ruijin Hospital. This effort has contributed to building a “warm and human-centered” surgical curriculum, supported by themed video collections, case repositories, and other instructional resources centered on the concept that “the course embodies the teacher, and the teacher embodies the course.” He also participated in the compilation of textbooks under China’s 14th Five-Year Plan and served as principal investigator for a Shanghai Jiao Tong University special fund project on curriculum-based ideological education. These achievements were recognized with the Special Prize at the Second Shanghai Municipal Exhibition of Curriculum Ideological and Political Teaching Design.
As a clinical educator, Ye conducts teaching research with a strong student-centered orientation while maintaining high classroom standards. He has contributed to the development of a new paradigm in medical education scholarship that places instructional design at its core, with related work published internationally and receiving high recognition from peers. Ahead of the 40th Teachers’ Day in 2024, Academician Wen Yumei, a nationally honored educator and senior professor at Fudan University, personally inscribed a message of encouragement for Ye’s teaching contributions, urging him to “strive for the nation and serve the people.”
During his medical support assignment at Sanming First Hospital in Fujian Province, Ye came to realize that while medical assistance addresses immediate needs, the transfer of teaching capacity serves the future. By participating in local faculty training and mentorship, he helped the hospital secure its first provincial-level excellence award (Second Prize) for apure teaching course. Building on this experience, Ye has actively participated in national-level faculty development programs and disseminated his teaching outcomes through online platforms and public outreach initiatives in rural areas. His efforts have reached more than a dozen medical schools and hospitals across central and western China, as well as Fujian and Anhui provinces, contributing to the balanced development of high-quality medical education and fostering shared growth among young educators.
A Torchbearer of Medical Education at SJTU School of Medicine
In Ye Feng’s view, delivering excellent lectures is only one dimension of becoming an outstanding teacher. Equally important is leading by example in daily work—subtly influencing students, cultivating their clinical thinking, and guiding them in how to confront challenges and conduct themselves professionally. These, he believes, are essential responsibilities of an educator.
“When I encounter difficulties,” Ye explains, “I often ask myself how my own teachers would have handled the situation.” While medical knowledge evolves at a breathtaking pace, the core principles of mentorship and professional ethics remain unchanged. Eleven years into his clinical career, Ye still vividly recalls the words of senior surgeon Professor Fu Peibin, whom he learned from as a student: “A surgeon must love tissues, instruments, and patients alike,” and “A soft incision without induration and neatly aligned sutures—these are a surgeon’s signature.”
“Such principles may sound simple,” Ye reflects, “but they are difficult to put into practice. Still, they are ideals we must continually strive toward.” He notes that physicians in teaching hospitals often hold multiple roles and may work alongside their own mentors, their mentors’ mentors, as well as peers and students. “How you treat patients, teachers, and colleagues is always observed by students.” For this reason, Ye consistently reminds himself: “As a physician, never forget that you are a mirror for your students; as a teacher, never forget that your students are the physicians of the future.”
In 2025, Ye Feng was selected as a representative of the Ministry of Education’s National Outstanding Teachers for the nationwide “Spirit of Educators” lecture tour. He attributes his growth to the profound teaching heritage and traditions of both the university and the hospital. Educational legacies such as Academician Wang Zhenyi—recipient of the Medal of the Republic—and his famed practices of the “Thursday open-book exam” and the “one discipline, four academicians” are sources of great pride for Ruijin faculty. Ye delivered a keynote lecture at the inaugural national session organized by the Ministry of Education, using Academician Wang’s life and work to vividly promote the spirit of educators. He subsequently traveled to six provinces, including Henan, Hubei, and Shanxi, for outreach lectures. Through platforms such as the National Smart Education Public Service Platform and the Open University of China, Ye shared this educational spirit with teachers nationwide across preschool, basic, special, vocational, and higher education sectors—enhancing ideological development and teaching capacity while strengthening the educational brand of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, its School of Medicine, and Ruijin Hospital.
Refining the Self Through the Integration of Physician and Educator
At the lectern, Ye Feng is a young medical educator who values the reciprocal growth of teaching and research; in the operating room, he is a dedicated surgeon specializing in laparoscopic and endoscopic techniques. Ye firmly believes that to be an effective educator in medicine, one must first be a competent and compassionate physician. High-quality surgical teaching, he argues, must be grounded in clinical practice and supported by rich case experience and diverse technical approaches.
Under the close mentorship of Director Chen Sheng, Ye centered his clinical focus on biliary diseases and participated in building a one-stop minimally invasive diagnostic and treatment system integrating robotic surgery, laparoscopy, ultrasound-guided intervention, and ERCP—fundamentally transforming the traditionally high-trauma approach to complex biliary surgery and enabling truly minimally invasive care for patients. Guided by Director Chen Yongjun, Ye conducted clinical research on treatment strategies for ruptured hepatocellular carcinoma—the most critical condition in liver cancer—establishing the world’s first rupture prediction model, standardizing treatment pathways, and contributing to their inclusion in the National Health Commission’s Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Primary Liver Cancer. Under the leadership of Vice President Zhao Ren, Ye also made a series of key optimizations in technologies for treating colorectal cancer liver metastases, achievements that were recognized with the Second Prize of the Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award.
Building on these clinical innovations and research outcomes, Ye actively mentors undergraduate student organizations, promoting the integration of medical education and clinical practice, and collaboratively cultivating students’ innovative thinking in surgery.
Through Ye Feng’s experience, one sees both the decisiveness and creativity of a surgeon devoted to medicine, and the enduring passion of a young educator dedicated to teaching. As On Teachers (Shishuo) famously begins: “In ancient times, learners inevitably had teachers.” The concept of “teacher,” Ye often notes, encompasses both educators and physicians—one serving as a moral exemplar, the other practicing medicine with benevolence and skill. To unite these two identities, he believes, is both an honor and a responsibility: it requires embracing diverse perspectives in the integration of medicine, education, and research, while also maintaining a pure commitment to quiet perseverance—always moving forward, without pause.
【Profile of a Distinguished Teacher】
Ye Feng is a recipient of the First Prize of the 2025 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Award for Excellence in Teaching and Educating Students. He is an Attending Physician and Associate Professor in the Department of General Surgery at Ruijin Hospital affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. He serves as a member of the Youth Working Group of the Hepatocellular Carcinoma Committee of the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, and of the Medical-Engineering Integration and Intelligent Medicine Group under the Colorectal Cancer Committee of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association. His honors include First Prize at the National Young Teachers Teaching Competition for Colleges and Universities, Second Prize of the Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award, the Shanghai Youth May Fourth Medal (Individual), Shanghai Outstanding Teaching Award, Special Prize at the Shanghai Curriculum Ideological and Political Teaching Design Exhibition, and the “Most Popular Teacher Among Students” Award at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.
Contributing Units: Ruijin Hospital affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine; Faculty Affairs Office
Translated by: Denise
Proofread by: Rebecca
