“Understanding through mutual learning” – collaboration between Chinese and western medicines

The Hospital Authority (HA) launched ‘The Greater Bay Area Chinese Medicine Visiting Scholars Programme’ last year. The trial collaboration received wide recognition and support from the Chinese and western medical teams. The second phase has subsequently commenced in March 2023 to manage stroke and respiratory patients in hospitals including Prince of Wales Hospital, United Christian Hospital (UCH), and Haven of Hope Hospital (HHH).

Prof Zou Xu from the Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine was conducting a ward round with a group of Chinese medicine practitioners (CMPs) and western medicine (WM) doctors at HHH when he heard uplifting news from a patient. The patient told Prof Zou his condition had improved greatly after receiving acupuncture. “It has been very memorable to treat inpatients at bed side with local WM colleagues under mutually formulated Integrated Chinese-Western Medicine (ICWM) treatment, as well as building up clinical competency of local CMPs,” Prof Zou says.

Prof Zou admires the standardisation of patient care and medical procedures in HA hospitals which is worth learning for the Mainland medical system. He adds that Chinese medicine (CM) in the Mainland and Hong Kong has respective strengths. Evidence-based practice and innovation are the key to future CM development, local CMPs should equip themselves with modern diagnostic techniques that could help improve clinical effectiveness. Ko Wing-ching, Registered Nurse at HHH says colleagues were happy to support and cooperate with CMPs as a team to deliver patient care.

“The programme aims to tap the strengths of each discipline. It sets up a clinical platform for CM and WM teams to explore the possibility of cooperation, and develop evidence-based ICWM in terms of disease types where CM had advantage on,” explains Rowena Wong, Chief Manager (Chinese Medicine). She looks forward to leveraging on the expertise of more Mainland CM experts to enrich ICWM model, developing with the experiences gained from the trial collaboration, and to extend it to new disease types, thereby benefitting more patients.

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