June 27, 2011
Our first day of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) rotation started with observing Dr. Yen-Yi Ho, the director of TCM department of the hospital. This morning he had about sixty patients, and more than one-third were here for acupuncture. While I was still wondering if he can finish all these patients in time, he showed me how he could make it possible. Since he knows all of his patients really well (to the degree that he can make fun of them without offending them), he can spends less than five minutes on each patient without sacrificing quality of visit (such as patient-doctor interactions). He also used his time wisely so that he can finish multiple jobs in one time. For example, Dr. Ho used the acupuncture time as his “break” from sitting in front of table. Before the “break”, the nurse would have the patients who need acupuncture sit in chairs or lie on beds. Then Dr. Ho would walk between the chairs and beds to put the needles on rapidly. Since patients getting acupuncture need to have needles on for thirty minutes, Dr. Ho would get back to work and have the nurse take out the needles later. Through observing behind Dr. Ho, I got the idea about how to make outpatient visit more efficiently without sacrificing its quality. In the afternoon, Karen and I met and shadowed Dr. Chien-An Chen. We had a discussion about what’s OMM and what we want to learn from TCM, and he suggested that acupuncture would be a good topic to learn. He originally planned to give us an introduction of ten most common used acupuncture points. But since we needed to leave early for the case presentation, that lecture would be given next time.
June 28, 2011
In the morning, Karen and I reported to Dr. Shu-Ling Hsieh, the TCM physician who is specialized in weight loss. Her weight loss clinic only takes those with BMI >24.1 for male and BMI> 22 for female. According to Dr. Hsieh, the most important thing to make weight loss possible is diet control. And the herbal medicines and acupuncture she uses in the clinic is just to assist the change in diet habit easier. Since our bodies can absorb the calorie faster from carbohydrate than proteins or fat, her diet education to patients focuses on low-carb diet. Her patients are required not to have anything fried or sweet. They are told to eat mainly vegetables (not including the ones with a lot of starch like potato), fruits (no too sweet ones), and proteins (no too fatty or salty ones). Since a lot of Taiwanese people get used to have dishes with rice, she also suggests them to have dishes with soup instead. One of her patients she had today actually reported losing 17 kg in two months. This makes thinking maybe I can use what I just learned from Dr. Hsieh to help my family members and I lose weight. In the afternoon, we met Dr. Ho again in outpatient clinic. Today he still had a lot of patients visiting him for acupuncture. We observed him performing acupuncture on patients rapidly. And he is so experienced to acupuncture that he can use only palpation to find each acupuncture point precisely.
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