Central South University has a long history of nursing education. Since the establishment of the Yale Care School in 1911 by the Yale-China Association, it has turned out a large number of medical professionals following the motto of "diligence and conscientiousness". In 2000, the School's nursing department master's degree program was approved by the Ministry of Education. In 2004, it was given the right to award first-rate discipline doctoral degrees by the Ministry of Education while nursing has been listed as a key subject of Central South University and of Hunan Province in 2004.

There are 8 doctoral supervisors and 22 master supervisors in this discipline. The full-time and part-time faculty consist of 18 professors, 15 associate professors, and 21 lecturers. Among them, 21 have obtained a doctorate, accounting for 36.5% of the total faculty members. Among the full-time professors, 21 are young professionals having obtained master's degrees and doctoral degrees, accounting for 76% of all professionals, of which 14 have obtained a doctorate, accounting for 44% of the total number of professors.

This Nursing department has built strong scientific research capabilities. There are currently six research teams: community-based elderly care, community-based chronic disease protection, community-based AIDS prevention and care, clinical psychological care, pain care and nursing safety. So far, the school department has undertaken nearly 20 national-level scientific research projects, more than 50 provincial and ministerial-level scientific research projects, more than 40 international projects, with over 15 million yuan for scientific research funding and nearly 700 scientific research papers published in this field. Over 40 SCI papers and more than 600 papers have been published in Chinese top journals.

In terms of talent training, the undergraduate, graduate, and doctor programs have made great progress both in numbers and in quality during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan. The enrollment of undergraduates has risen from 60 to nearly 90 per year; the enrollment of postgraduate students up from 5 per year to more than 40 now while that of doctoral students has grown from 1 per year in 2004 to 4-6 per year. This year, there are nearly 400 undergraduates, more than 300 postgraduates, and over 20 PhDs enrolled. The quality of the training program has been highly recognized by employers. The employment rate of undergraduates and graduates is 100% with reputed employers. The college is increasing its investment in teaching, with funds of over 1 million yuan to build a clinical nursing training center, 500,000 yuan for the construction of three community-based scientific research bases for nursing trainee program, internships and of three teaching hospitals. The clinical training center is open to all medical students.

The School has developed high-level international cooperation, including the partnership with Yale University for 100 years, mainly in areas of faculty development, research capacity building, and graduate training, and partnerships with other prestigious international universities such as University of Southern California, University of Ottawa, Canada.