Integrating traditional Chinese medicine into Chinese medical education reform: issues and challenges

The Chinese state system of medical education has been undergoing reform since the turn of the millennium, with greater impetus since 2008.1,2 These reforms impinge on pluralistic health care institutions. Medical pluralism has thrived over the past 60 years in China within state-run hospitals, universities, and clinics in which biomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are practiced in parallel. By biomedicine, we mean the diagnostic and therapeutic methods and practices first developed in Europe, based on experimentally derived understandings of the body as a biological system. By TCM, we indicate a system of theories and practices based a vast collection of ancient texts that have been enriched with clinical experiences in China and other parts of East Asia for over two millennia, with millions of practitioners in China and across the world today. Despite significant differences between the ways these two medical systems understand the body and treat illnesses, they are often taught and practiced side-byside within the Chinese state health care system.