Chinese Medicine Training in China

[Guest guest]

All,

I'm beginning to run out of steam, and time, with all this posting, but I want to speak to a comment I heard at the conference. Somebody was saying that the Chinese go to TCM school in China for five years, roughly 2.5 years of Western medicine and 2.5 years of Chinese medicine. They said 2.5 years of Western medical school is hardly enough to qualify one to be a nurse, and 2.5 years of Chinese medicine is less than we in the West get.

 

Well. I asked my Chinese colleague Qun Li about her training in China. She said that indeed her schooling was about 1/2 and 1/2 WM and CM. She also said she went to classes and labs about six hours a day, six days a week, about 40 weeks a year. No one was allowed to work an outside job. Summers were off until the fourth year, when they were required to observe in hospital all summer. The fifth year was all in clinic. So I figure she ended up with around 8000 hours total, about 4000 hours WM and 4000 hours CM. How many of us got 4000 hours of CM? (And by the way, she went on for three years postgraduate training in CM.)

 

She also said they had time for fun, too. I also can recall one of my Chinese teachers telling me how he and his classmates stood in formation every day like soldiers and did eye exercises.

 

Then I asked her if there was any undergraduate requirement, and she said no, she went into TCM school right out of high school. So I asked her about high school. Like Europe, China has testing between middle school and high school. Those who pass the tests go on to college prep high school and the rest go to more vocationally-oriented training. She went to high school about six hours a day, six days a week, 40 weeks a year and studied physics, algebra and geometry, English, chemistry, biology, physiology, Chinese literature and other subjects, including, in her case, shooting, this being during the Cultural Revolution when they were preparing for imminent attack by the United States. There was no further math training in TCM school, though there was some for those who went on a pure WM track. She says all the WM training in TCM schools is what allows those with her training to apply for board certification for MD degrees in the US, so apparently the US medical system thinks their WM training is reasonably equivalent to that in the West. Thought you might find this interesting, too.

Joseph Garner