A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
First TCM Hospital Opens in Macao
The Macao Special Administrative Region of China has announced the opening of its first traditional Chinese medicine hospital. The hospital will be based at the Macao University of Science and Technology in Taipa, and will be run in conjunction with the Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The new 60-bed facility will be used as a training hospital for Macao's faculty of Chinese medicine and the Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health to provide greater depth in the training of practitioners and the treatment of patients through traditional Chinese medicine. According to Zhou Li Gao, Macao University's vice rector, the hospital will help "to show the advantages of Chinese medicine, even as an adjunct to Western practices like surgery."
Timothy Chan, director of the Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, said that research conducted at the hospital will be supported by the Macao government.
"People here are more inclined to make it work," Chan said. "We are better able to establish a network, and that's the key to the success" of the hospital.