Associate Professor Linda Zhong, director of biomedical sciences and Chinese medicine at NTU, said the university will work with TTSH’s allied health physicians and doctors to assess a patient’s suitability for TCM treatment.
“(We will) then decide in what conditions we can use acupuncture, and what is the frequency and what is the duration of the acupuncture will be treated to the patients. This will ensure the patient’s safety, and then we can assess their effectiveness,” she added.
NTU STUDENTS TO DO CLINICAL ROTATION
From 2027, NTU’s Chinese Medicine students will also do a 13-week clinical rotation at the hospital for three hours a week in their final year.
The aim is to prepare a new generation of TCM practitioners to serve a rising demand for treatments that mix Eastern and Western medicine.
According to the national population health survey conducted in 2022, one in five adults in Singapore use TCM every year, with nearly 40 per cent of them pairing it with Western care.
“Our students are also trained in biomedical sciences and Western medicine, and they also learn the basic knowledge of clinical research so that they will use the same language to express the patient’s history, diagnosis and treatment,” noted Assoc Prof Zhang.
Teo Chun Yong, secretary-general of the Singapore Chinese Physicians’ Association, said certain TCM treatments, such as those for chronic pain and infertility, have been gaining popularity.
Even migrant workers have turned to TCM to manage their pain from a workplace injury and get better so they can return to work more quickly, he noted.
At Chung Hwa Medical Institution, which serves as the association’s headquarters and houses a TCM clinic, practitioners are now using modern diagnostic tools to perform tongue and pulse examinations, said Mr Teo.
This is to heed a recent call by the government for more evidence-based TCM treatments.
“I’m (not for the idea that) we try to change everything overnight and say: ‘You have to accept TCM’,” Mr Teo told CNA’s Singapore Tonight programme.
“I think what we could do more is find common grounds whereby we can work towards the common good for the patients.”
