Objective　This study aimed to survey students' satisfaction and cognitive attitude of elaborate course of social medicine to provide a basis for exploring appropriate teaching mode. Methods　Purposive sampling was used with questionnaire to survey 646 students who had learned social medicine in 5 universities in Guangdong province. The survey included the social medicine curriculum， teaching situation， students' satisfaction and cognitive attitude of elaborate course of so-cial medicine. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to describe the demographic characteristics and curriculum. The t test and one-way ANOVA were used to compare the means of students' satisfaction and cognitive attitude of elaborate course in different universities， using the test level of 0.05. Results　The lecture-based learning was the main teaching mode. 335（52.7%） students thought it necessary to learn social medicine， but only 27.2% of the students（173 students） were interested in social medicine and 65（10.2%） students could take the initiative to read about extracurricular books. Overall satisfac-tion with using network resources of elaborate course in two universities that had university-level elab-orate course of social medicine were （2.78 ± 0.55） and （3.01 ± 0.30） respectively and the difference was statistically significant（t=-3.97，P<0.01）. The cognitive attitude of the students in 5 universities with using network resources of elaborate course was （3.09±0.66） and the difference was statistically significant（F=3.70，P<0.01）. Conclusion　Social medicine teaching has been paid attention to in 5 universities， but there were some common problems： ①putting emphasis on theory and ignoring prac-tice in teaching mode； ②putting emphasis on credit and ignoring effectiveness in learning； ③and putting emphasis on construction and ignoring using in network resources of elaborate course of social medicine.