Treating Without Reservation
Treating Without Reservation
Chinese medicine, at its very core, is about saving life, treating serious illness, and returning someone to their abilities. We do this with a small set of tools to maximize our strengths: herbs, acupuncture, bodywork, advice and exercise. We use the guiding principle behind all of Chinese culture to guide our diagnosis and treatment: that change is the truth of existence, that illness and injuries are changes to the body's harmony, and we must affect change to the disharmony to return to harmony to the person.
This truth is most plain to see in emergency treatment. The ravages of serious illness or injury are obvious, leading to death or disability. There is no debate about the efficacy of treatment: they live due to our treatment or die despite our effort. In this moment, our level of skill and thechanges driving illness and health are thrown open for all to see.
Today, we are told that Chinese medicine no longer treats emergency cases. The immediate struggle for life and death is not a part of our practice. We are encouraged to work within the western medical system, work under a primary caregiver, and provide complimentary care. Why learn to beat back death when there is no opportunity to treat a life threatened? Training to that level of medicine requires time, commitment and sacrifice; and it does nothing to further our business practice. So each generation of practitioners works less hard, the medicine grows weaker and the very core is lost even as Chinese medicine becomes a common choice of treatment around the world.
If you practice medicine for a period of time, there is always a moment when you face life and death without the safety of western medicine to rely on. Perhaps it is when you are camping,days away from civilization; or while traveling in a developing country without medical facilities you trust; or even close to home but far from any way to call for help. It may be a stranger, a family member, or your favorite horse. It may end up being as simple as there is no electricity where you are for some reason, and thus the western machines do not work. At that moment, will you be able to treat without reservation, knowing you are doing the best you can regardless of success or failure?
It does not take long years of practice to learn to treat courageously. In fact, it does not happen at all if it is not trained into you. In days gone by, you experienced emergency medicine as you interned under a teacher cleaning wounds, changing bedpans, holding the hand of a dying man. Your medical training was not separated into acute and chronic treatments, nor did it ever stray from its roots. You were useful from the beginning or were sent home. You started with techniques free of complicated theory, and then slowly expanded your abilities as theoretical knowledge wove itself into your practical skills to create a better practitioner.
I learned under the last generation who grew up and practiced in a time when Chinese medicine was primary medicine. Their fame still brought emergency cases to the door as I interned with them. I needed to be useful or I needed to be out of the way, and they needed to trust my resolve in learning this level of medicine. They trained me to reflect the traditional saying of Meticulous in Diagnosis, Courageous in Treatment, Unshaken When Facing Situations. As the years have gone by, I have realized the only real difference between my practice and most others is this training to treat an emergency to the best of my ability without reservation. Every other difference stems from this. How I read the classics, build my pharmacy, choose my needles, diagnose my patients and strategize my treatments are all influenced by the commitment I made to learn the core of Chinese medicine: saving life, treating serious illness, and returning someone to their abilities.
As the years have gone by, I have realized that what has taken me 20 years to grasp as the key to learning Chinese medicine can be taught quickly. As the late Professor Wang Jin-Huai always admonished: It doesn't take a long time to learn, the learning should be fast–it is deepening what you have learned that takes time. Taking these words to heart, I set about designing a curriculum that makes Meticulous in Diagnosis, Courageous in Treatment available to every practitioner, regardless of whether they see emergency cases or not. In learning the skills, one learns the perspective. With the perspective in place, one's practice is changed forever. This curriculum is clinically based medicine. It begins with practical medicine that is immediately useful and then blends more and more theory into each treatment strategy. It follows the learning path of new student, but is designed for licensed practitioners so that progress is fast and applicable in their practice at each step along the way.
When Mark Seem, President of Tri State College of Acupuncture in New York City, saw the curriculum, he immediately set about adopting it into their 300 hour program of Acupuncture in Orthopedics and Rehabilitation: A Classical Chinese Medicine Perspective. It is now a Post Graduate Credit Bearing Course being taught in six modules over 10 months starting July 2012. This joint initiative between ATS and TSCA is set to expand as they launch First Doctorate Programs over the coming years.