I’ve known for a while that my friend Steph Mui had been to China over the 2011 summer break, but I didn’t really know her reason behind the journey halfway across the world. A nursing major, Steph is talented in many academic respects: she spent three weeks of her summer at a community health clinic in Beijing, specifically studying traditional Chinese medicine and treatments.
Steph was able to fund her trip by applying for an Advanced Study Grant through BC. While rewarding, this is a grueling process that involves writing a detailed grant proposal, meeting with your dean and faculty advisors, and ultimately presenting your idea to the fellowships committee. Stephanie proposed her idea for gaining “cultural competence,” something she argues is extremely important in nursing, by experiencing how people in China deal with healthcare, how they provide it, and how they ultimately treat patients. She would be focusing on traditional Chinese medicine; no Western medicine would be involved. This meant no pharmaceuticals, no surgeries, and especially no Tylenol.
After being granted her funds by the fellowship program, she flew 17 hours to China to begin her fellowship. She worked under a veteran doctor who had the admiration of the other doctors in the clinic. Practicing the skills she learned on other doctors, Steph went through a week of training and practice before the main two weeks of the program. She even spent two days at one of the biggest hospitals in China and was able to see the differences between Western medicine and traditional, non-invasive Chinese healing.
The invasiveness, she said, is one of the biggest turn-offs for Chinese patients, who consider procedures like surgery extremely invasive of personal space. Patients often prefer the most natural treatment techniques possible and only turn to Western medicine as a last resort. In fact, even the simplest of treatments requires extensive background research on each individual patient. As Steph said, “They make all patients go in for an x-ray— it’s very medical, and there is a lot of diagnosis and pre-procedure work.”
Specifically, some of the ancient Chinese medicine and healing techniques that Stephanie learned about included “cupping,” massage, and acupuncture. If you collegiettes™ are like me, you probably don’t know what “cupping” is either. Steph explained that in this process, doctors use a flame and a glass jar is placed over the affected area of the body, creating a vacuum that releases toxins and makes the glass stick to the patient’s skin.
Acupuncture I knew a little bit more about, but Steph explained the technical terms to me. If the energy of the body, qi, is thrown off, then the body will experience illness. By placing tiny needles (so tiny they can bend!) in specific pressure points around the body, the acupuncturists can restore the body’s natural balance of energy. Acupuncture is apparently a huge trend in China and is well known for its effectiveness on pain.
But massage? “Massage is big— it’s an art. I was exhausted! Most of it was done with the elbow, a lot of rubbing and kneading. They knew how to manipulate muscles and bones so well. They learned it in school, so they’re really good at it.” She even got to massage patients herself!
I asked Stephanie about the most significant thing she learned during her studies in China for those three weeks. She said she was most influenced by the idea that “not everybody looks at healthcare the same way. People looking for traditional medicines come [to China] because a lot of healthcare providers [in America] fail to give options to their patients— you can’t assume everybody wants the same thing.”
She recognized that other cultures, including the Chinese, treat the same ailments just as effectively as Western medicine; she maintained that “[The treatments] have positive results— they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work.” Cultural preference is certainly an important factor when deciding how to best treat a patient, a fact that was a huge step for her on her path to becoming a better nurse.
I couldn’t believe all of the amazing things Steph was able to do in China, but I know one thing is certain: I won’t be using snakeskin juice (which apparently treats some illnesses very well) to cure my current sinus infection any time soon.