Contemporary connotation of public health physicians in China: a literature study

Objective To explore contemporary connotation of public health physicians in China and to provide a theoretical basis for developing a sound public health physician system.

Methods We retrieved 134 domestic and foreign literatures and documents referring the definition public health physician through Web of Science, PubMed, ScienceDirect, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Sci-Tech Journals Database (VIP), Wanfang Database, and 46 authoritative websites and we established a matrix of keywords of public health physicians with co-term analysis using Excel 2016 and SPSS 18.0.

Results Co-word matrix-based multidimensional scaling analysis resulted in a stress value of 0.203 90 and a regression squared value of 0.798 86. Modern public health physician is a complex concept with four domains including fundamental characteristics, role orientation, core function, and requirement for admission.

Conclusion The contemporary connotation of public health physician in China includes basic characteristics, role orientation, core functions and requirement for admission and public health physicians are a group of professional and technical personnel responsible for promoting population health.