This is the topic that I am going to discuss today. Maybe you are not aware or maybe you are that I am currently taking my PhD study in the history of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). You might be surprised or might not be about this choice that I have made, choosing a theoretical course rather than the clinical. I am the only one in the class to choose it (the history of TCM). It is undeniable that the majority of them are taking clinical medicine. Not only I have received many criticisms about the choice of studying history (not even the fundamental theories of TCM), but also the choice of taking up my master in Medical Anthropology. They disdain all these choices, and indeed the fact that the TCM association is still not recognising my Oxford master certification has made things even worse.
I have received endless teasing about me wasting my time and the money to go to the UK and came back to Malaysia with that piece of paper that worth nothing in their eyes. On top of that, they claim that my current choice of taking history as my main research field is worthless because they believe it is not helpful in improving treatment efficacy nor advancing our clinical skills. I dispute such a false claim.
First of all, without knowing the history, we would be wasting plenty of resources (be it time or money), due to the lack of knowledge on what we have done wrong all the time. We basically would not know what exactly are needed to improve or improvise on (both clinically and theoretically) .
Besides, to ace in everything, we have to go back to the root, which is through the study of history.
To improve the clinical efficacy and reduce waste, we have to be extremely clear about how everything has evolved and how it is formed.
In short, studying history is not as simple as knowing the dates, the names, the people, rather the essence of studying history is to know the formation, the evolution and to analyse such evolution and revolution to culminate into their best. To optimise the resources, we have to study history well, not to forget, even clinical medicine has its own history.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way…. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.” ― Jeff Keller, Attitude Is Everything
Correct attitude is the key, to lead us to the right path. In order to be a good physician and succeed in helping more patients, we have to be way more open-minded. A good school can have a student who could not follow, a bad school can still have an excellent student. Studying clinical medicine does not make you a good physician and studying theoretical course does not make you a bad physician. Numbers does not show everything. In fact, to sincerely help patients to live a quality life, we need to learn more about life and definitely not limiting ourselves into a boundary that set by our own. This does not mean that we cannot and should not specialise in something, for instance, I am highly interested in philosophy, which I want to specialise in, but that does not hold me back from learning mathematics, statistics and other clinical needs. Now, this is where I say studying history is important.
People who have judged me (us) do not know my (our) history. What I mean here is that I used to hate history and philosophy when I was in high school. So, why I want to specialise in history or philosophy? Additional Mathematics and physics were my best subjects. I was not even trained in social science, rather I was trained in natural science during my five years undergraduate. I had a clinical trial experiment (sponsored by a big herbal company) as my final year project when I was in my 5th year of undergraduate. I did SPSS, I had a successful sample collection of 80 patients during that project. Maybe then you would say I am just smart since I was a child. To be honest, I never top in the class, and any of the languages is not my strength (this can be seen from my school report cards).
So, what have happened to all these transformations, and how I actually managed to be accepted by an ivy league university? Seriously, I still could not believe it until today that I successfully graduated from there. I still tell people about how lucky I was to have such opportunity to learn there. However, reminiscing those days, where I had to write 2000 words essay every single week, how I had to do two debates and had to take the exams in that beautiful historical and magnificent examination school, I know that all my hard work has paid off. To say proudly, to have completed that four papers within a week, each paper was to write three essays on-the-spot, with at least four pages each essay, I got to say, I was not bad at writing after-all.
In summary, after reading my story, you should not set boundaries to yourself, and practice indeed makes perfect. Last but not least, there are no stereotypes (so, there is no need of bullying, claiming that you are better than anyone). Seriously, when there are no stereotypes, there is nothing called "I am better, while you are not".
#breakthestereotypes #stopallformsofbullying #openupyourmind #IfIcanyoucan #dailyjournal #medicalhistory #clinicalhistory
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