Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Jan 1, 2024
Date Accepted: May 13, 2025
The effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine course on the attitude towards traditional Chinese medicine: a self-control study among western medicine students
ABSTRACT
Background:
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used against various diseases in China for thousands of years and showed satisfactory effectiveness. However, many surveys found that TCM receives less recognition from Western medicine (WM) doctors and students. Presently, TCM is offered as a compulsory course for WM students in Western medical schools.
Objective:
This study aimed to investigate whether TCM courses can affect the WM students’ attitude toward TCM.
Methods:
WM students from Xiangya medical school were invited to finish the online questionnaire before and immediately after the TCM course. Their attitude toward TCM and treatment preferences for different kinds of diseases were tested.
Results:
For FYP students, there was a significant increase in the total score of ASTCM after the TCM course. The significant increase also showed in scores of the three factors of attitude. Except for score of behavior tendency, a significant increase was not detected in total score, cognition, and affection in EPY students. The treatment preference of FYP students in acute, chronic, and physical diseases showed remarkable change. The great change also was detected in internal diseases, surgical diseases (perioperative period), and mental illnesses in EYP students. This change mainly appeared as a decline in WM preference and an increase in TCM & WM preference.
Conclusions:
The study showed that earlier TCM course offering increased the positive attitude toward TCM in students majoring in WM. The results will provide some suggestions for TCM course arrangement in WM schools.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
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