Formerly known as Dalian Medical University, Zunyi Medical University was founded in 1947. It was moved to Zunyi and renamed as Zunyi Medical University upon the decision of the State Council in the 1960s. It is a provincial university and owns three campuses, two in Zunyi and one in Zhuhai. It has 5 directly-affiliated hospitals and 8 non-directly affiliated hospitals. The Directly Affiliated Hospital of ZMU and the Affiliated Stomatological Hospital of ZMU were the first 3A hospitals in Guizhou.
 

There are over 16,000 full-time students, including undergraduates, postgraduates and foreign students. Its undergraduate education covers 6 disciplines, including Medicine, Education, Management, Literature, Science and Engineering, with 30 undergraduate majors. As one of the first group of universities with authority to confer master degree, ZMU started its postgraduate education in 1955. It has 8 majors and 59 sub-majors for postgraduate program. The School of International Education was established in 2015 and after that it has been recruiting an increasing number of foreign students year by year. 

ZMU has 4 special majors, 3 key clinical specialties and 3 training bases of the university with national honors. For provincial honors, it has 7 key special subjects, 10 key subjects and 4 clinical key disciplines.

ZMU's clinical medicine entered the top 1% of ESI globally in 2018, and won the second prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award of Higher Education in 2018. It’s the only university in Guizhou Province that has won the National Teaching Achievement Award in the past five years to improve the quality of education and teaching.

ZMU has put emphasis on the scientific research. It has founded one Joint International Research Laboratory of Ethnomedicine of Ministry of Education, one Key Laboratory of Basic Pharmacology of Ministry of Education, and three provincial key laboratories. In recent five years, ZMU has undertaken 2,525 research projects, among which 272 projects are funded by NSFC. ZMU has published 9,025 papers in academic journals at home and abroad, including 2,820 papers included in core journals, among which 1,067 papers are included in SCI, EI, and ISTP.

ZMU has 4,463 faculty members, including 1,628 professors and associate professors, of whom 35 are doctoral supervisors, 807 master graduate supervisors. 48 experts enjoy special allowances from the State Council and the provincial government.

ZMU has established  scientific research cooperation with universities and institutes in more than 30 countries and regions such as the United States, Australia, Malaysia. It has launched the program for joint cultivation of doctors (PhD) with Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Chongqing Medical University.

School of International Education was established in 2015 and has enrolled students from Russia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, and Mongolia and so on. In recent years, the annual pass rate of foreign students learning Chinese is about 97% in taking HSK4, and 98.5% in HSK5.