My Journey of becoming a TCM Physician Chapter 3: Relearning Western Medicine…. in Chinese!
Finally after somewhat settling in in our new ‘home’ for the next 2 years, lessons started within second week after the touch down.
We all thought things could be a little more relaxing by now since we had one less major degree to study. If I remembered correctly, we started our first lesson in the hospital classroom and it was about ECG. It was not something unfamiliar as we had some lessons on it already in Singapore. The thing was, we had to do all that now IN CHINESE!!! And looking at the curriculum schedule, basically we were expected to relearn anatomy, physiology, all illnesses and conditions in the first language in this foreign land.
Learning ECG in Chinese was no joke. Because until now I can still vividly feel my helplessness and jaw drops when the teacher who was a doctor in the emergency room talked to us about P 波，QRS 波， T波，房颤 （atrial fibrillation）. The very thing I remembered was also me zoning out for 95% of the time in that lesson while planning what to buy for my household cleaning items and grocery that day after class.
2 of my Chinese Anatomy reference books which were saviours at that time when we had to literally translate all we knew about Anatomy into Chinese language!
Luckily textbooks and books basically were way cheaper than the medical western books in Singapore, so upkeeping the kiasu spirit of Singaporean, flocking to look for resources to help us make sense of what the teacher was talking about became a norm for us after each lesson which left us braindead if not paralysed mentally. The main school base bookshop, XiDan Book Store (the largest bookstore in Beijing), Taobao.com became where we frequent after every theory lesson. During such lessons, I always had the feeling of looking at those words that seemed so familiar yet so distant. And some terminologies had expanded by their length in name in Chinese, which required a zillion more of my brain cells to die to get it into my grey matter. Example like bicep which was 1 word 2 syllable soon became 4 words 4 syllable (肱二头肌).
As a matter of fact we had to go through this stage before the clinical rotations started where we were assigned to be attached to each department in the hospital and took on assistant roles for the chief attending physician in each department. Now just so you did not realise, many major hospitals in China have long integrated Western Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine together. So the hospital that I was attached to together with my fellow Singaporean students had similar integration. Doctors in these hospitals were Western and TCM trained, so there were always situations when the doctors could prescribe surgery or western medications together with Chinese medicine or TCM treatment methods. And we (the white rats from the double degree programme) were expected to be able to talk Western medicine and Chinese Medicine too!
And so days went by again filled with lessons and us trying to decipher what the teachers were talking about in Chinese and then reengineered in our minds in English. Some of us were even writing on our notes in English still, but this phenomenon died down within 1-2 months of our stay in Beijing. Environment played a major part as our Chinese for speaking, writing, listening progressed to advance level at a speed we found it unbelievable too!
Further Reading:
Everything you need to know about Acupuncture
Facial Acupuncture - How to differentiate the real deal from the fakers
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