Members of the University community who have the flu, a bone or two out of place, or something more serious, have a new on-campus option for medical advice and treatment besides the University Health Service. The Chinese Medicine Teaching Clinic was opened four months ago in the Sino Building on the Chung Chi campus, to provide Chinese medical services to students, staff, and their dependants. The clinic also serves primarily as a clinical training base for the students of the University's School of Chinese Medicine.
 The dispensary awaiting occupation |
 The consultation room in mahogany |
 A corner of the clinic |
 The bone-setting room |
 Marriage of ancient wisdom and modern technology: computerized pulse detectors are used to train students in the basics of pulse detection |
The clinic has three sections: general consultation, bone setting, and acupuncture. Services in these sections are provided by experienced part-time Chinese medical practitioners who also act as mentors to the students. Prof. Che Chun-tao, director of the School of Chinese Medicine, says, 'Having direct contact with patients is very important in the training of a Chinese medical practitioner. Students cannot practise without at least knowing how to serve the patients, take their pulse, and prescribe medication. Hence the teaching clinic is, as its name suggests, first and foremost a venue for training our students.'
The clinic's five practitioners (3 generalists, 1 acupuncturist and 1 bone-setter) have been handpicked to ensure they would be excellent teachers and mentors who are also professionally qualified, besides being highly competent doctors. These Chinese medicine clinical instructors have not only been practising in Hong Kong for several decades, but have also done part-time teaching in Chinese medicine schools run by the Chinese medical associations.
At present visitors to the clinic have to take their prescriptions elsewhere to collect their herbs. However, starting February 2003, the clinic will have its own dispensary. Space has already been set aside outside the consultation room for herbal drawers and a dispensary counter, all in polished mahogany. 'Students need to be trained in dispensing too. Although there is a division of labour between practitioners and dispensers nowadays, all good Chinese doctors do and should have knowledge of this aspect of their field,' Prof. Che points out. To ensure quality and authenticity, only natural herbs and ingredients will be used, not processed ingredients in powder form.
In the four months since its establishment, the clinic has entertained 1,100 visits and opened over 300 patient files. At present it is open from 1.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. every weekday afternoon, and from 9.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on Saturday. The patients are spaced quite far apart (by the general standard of Chinese medicine clinics in Hong Kong) with only three being allotted to each hour, because time has to be allowed for the practitioner to explain clearly to the students and for the students to take notes. For this reason the clinic has had to reject patients. Prof. Che says, however, that there are plans to extend opening hours so that the students will be exposed to more and different cases and more patients will have access to the services.
The price range among local Chinese medicine practitioners is wide. Celebrity doctors get away with charging a few hundred and even a few thousand per consultation while others practising in the wet markets of public housing estates charge less than HK$50. The clinic's price tags of HK$80 per consultation and HK$120 per bone-setting or acupuncture session are made after consulting those of qualified practitioners in the market. 'We are not a profit-making unit and our resources come from our teaching budget,' says Prof. Che. 'The prices we charge cover mainly teaching expenses and items like bed-sheets and acupuncture needles which cannot be reused, and other consumables.' At present the University's medical benefit scheme does not cover Chinese medicine. Prof. Che indicates that a development worth considering for the clinic would be for University members to be reimbursed for their visits to the clinic but he adds that the arrangement is also subject to the decision of the University administration. Commercialization, on the other hand, will not be a direction of development in the foreseeable future. The clinic will remain non-profit-making and limited only to serving members of the University community.
Chinese medicine is becoming increasingly popular with the younger segment of the population in Hong Kong, and accompanying this popularity are calls for measures to modernize it, for example, by requiring Chinese medical practitioners to register. But does Chinese medicine, which is more about wisdom than intelligence, lend itself to modernization? Would something be lost in the process? 'Registration will narrow down the inconsistencies in the profession and enable it to flourish. Chinese medical practitioners now need to be able to fulfil modern needs. For example, if a patient tells them he has tonsillitis, they need to know what it is. Modern patients are very likely to consult both Chinese and Western doctors. At the School of Chinese Medicine, we train our students to be modern Chinese medical practitioners --- professionals who combine ancient wisdom with scientific evidence. We have very high expectations of them,' says Prof. Che.
CUHK Newsletter, 214, 4th January 2003