Chinese Medicine Education － A Global View
Speech delivered at The 3rd International Congress of Traditional Medicine, September 2006 Canada
50th Anniversary Conference of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, October 2006. Beijing
by Professor Man Fong Mei （梅万方教授）
Abstract
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Current international medical education, broadly speaking is based on the system developed in the west. Mainstream medicine is evidence based, evolved in the past two or three hundred years with the advancement of science. A comparative studies of medical education in different countries mirrors similarities in undergraduate study, internship and specialty training requirements. The content of most syllabuses includes western medicine theoretical studies in Evidence Based Medicine, anatomy, pathology, pharmacology, moral & ethical education etc. However, criteria of measurement and enforcement standards differ from country to country. For example, the critical standards of the UK Royal Colleges may be similar to the peer knowledge of specialties in the US, Australia or Japan, the system of educational evaluation and educational standards requirement are different. This prompt the World Medical Association to propose an agreed minimum standards for international medical education without which it will be difficult to achieve international mutual recognition and accreditation. This is a fundamental step in our 21st century world of medicine without frontiers.
We can debate the pros and cons of the globalisation of medicine and global co-operation in healthcare to cope with diseases without frontiers, the like of Bird Flu, AIDS and SARS. However there is no doubt that a rational review of our medical education system is overdue not only because of the CPD requirement for doctors with the rapid changes in clinical sciences and disease management, but also the very validity of Evidence Based Medicine is called into question with the increasing challenge from Dialectical Based Medicine, holistic medicine and revived traditional medicine to western orthodoxy. In 2004, the medical associations of different countries including US, Canada, China and India meet at the Shanghai roundtable summit to discuss international medical leadership and international collaboration concluded with a declaration that “globalisation of medicine is necessary and inevitable” after much deliberation and debates. How does this prediction in the future direction of medicine affect clinical practice and medical education? Is the Chinese model of integrative medicine in a somewhat separate, but collaborative clinical practiced a way forward? Will a real synthesis between western and Chinese medicine be possible? How do these factors affect the training of our future doctors? The search for answers to these questions awaits the arrival of a new bio-economic era.
Keywords
Chinese Medicine Education, Globalisation, Evidence Based Medicine (EBM), Dialectical Based Medicine (DBM), Mainstream Medicine, Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM), Integrative Medicine
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