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Welcome to the course of Integrative Pain Management (Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine)

Dr Jenny Tung will introduce you to an engaging integrative medicine MOOC about pain management on FutureLearn.
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Hello everyone. We are the Chinese Medicine (CM) subject group of HKU SPACE. We have been providing Chinese medicine education since the 1990s. Over the decades, we have proactively developed different kinds of programmes for CM practitioners and Western medical professionals. It is intended to help them study CM theories and clinical techniques and enhance the approach to the integrative medicine between Chinese and Western medicines. Pain is a common and intractable disease in clinical practice in Chinese and Western medicines. According to statistics from the World Health Organisation, one in five adults suffers from chronic pain.
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Due to complex causes of pain and the influence of physiological and psychological factors, difficulties in diagnosis and treatment have arisen and become a topic of concern in the international medical community. In recent years, pain management teams composed of Western medical doctors, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, clinical psychologists have become increasingly popular, but they have yet to completely cure most clinical pain symptoms. With the global upsurge of Chinese medicine, in which there is Chinese medicine practice, patients with pain may choose Chinese medicine in clinical practice. It is related to the advantages of traditional Chinese medicine treating both symptoms and root causes.
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A combined use of Chinese medicine with acupoints stimulation and herbs emphasises long-term effects, especially because physiological therapies such as acupuncture and moxibustion have an immediate effect from time to time with very few side effects on pain patients.
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A lack of communication between Chinese and Western medicine practitioners affected both parties to jointly promote pain treatment. It is difficult for them to establish mutual trust and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. This situation may jeopardise patients’ interests in the short run and is detrimental to the reasonable allocation and utilisation of medical resources in the long run. We hope that this short course will facilitate your understanding of the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western medicines for pain management, so that you can acquire more clinical skills through further studies.

Watch the above video where our lead educator, Dr Jenny Tung, introduces the course.

Introducing our lead educator

Dr Jenny Tung Shong is Programme Director of the Chinese Medicine subject group, Associate Head of the College of Life Sciences and Technology of HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education. She has held many public positions in the Chinese medicine industry for many years, including an elected member of the 4th Council of the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies. She actively promotes Chinese medical education in Hong Kong and has developed and launched various Chinese medicine programmes for medical professionals and the general public over the years.

With the educational background of Chinese literature and Chinese medicine, she is good at explaining theory of ancient Chinese medicine with lifelike examples. Dr Tung is also passionate about Chinese medicine clinical practice. As a descendant of the well-known school of Lingnan Luo’s gynaecology in the Chinese medical field, she is actively committed to the treatment of various diseases, which is well received by her patients, through using a combination of Chinese medicine and acupuncture.

Her teaching and learning philosophy

Dr Tung has wished for many years to promote the study and application of classic Chinese medicine theory. She is fully confident that there are universal significance and reproducibility in the application of the holistic concepts in ancient Chinese medicine to understand human physiology and pathology. In addition, the application provides alternative ideas for the treatment of intractable diseases.

She invited famous experts from Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, her alma mater, to jointly launch this course. This is the beginning of her promotion of Chinese medical education on FutureLearn. She hopes that various Chinese medicine courses will be launched on this platform in the near future. Such courses will help clinicians improve their diagnosis and treatment capabilities, and promote communication and interaction between Chinese and Western medical doctors around the world.

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Integrative Pain Management - Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine

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