Navigating through the sea of medicine

This is more of a personal entry. It is not a secret that I will be leaving China in a couple of days, after having spent 17 years in Beijing and Guangzhou. I leave my job at the Sports Trauma Hospital with feelings of great accomplishment and satisfaction after putting together a fully functional spinal deformities correction department.  However, since February there has been a hostile overtake of the hospital administration, and a split between the Niu Family. As a result, I decided not to follow either of the brothers, and opted to pursue an academic and clinical position in Phoenix, AZ.    Before leaving though, I had the chance to meet with my PhD supervisor, Prof. Chen Li-guo who’s retiring soon. Prof. Chen was the person who single handedly took the TCM Department at the Jinan University in 2000, kickstarted its Medical Degree, then a few years later established its Medical Master’s and more recently the PhD program.  Chen had an amazing journey in medicine, ...

Today I was at  the Guangzhou TCM University, to participate in the compilation of the extension of the "RIGHT statements for clinical practice guidelines" , specific to acupuncture. With Prof. Gordon Guyatt, the father of Evidence Based Medicine, and many important scholars from all over the world.   I was originally invited to join this team by Prof. Tang Chun-zhi, the Dean of the Acupuncture Department at the Guangzhou TCM University.  It is also a time to say goodbye to many of my good colleagues and friends, as this will be one of the last official tasks I undertake in my capacity as Doctor and Researcher at the Zhongxing Hospital, before moving to the United States later in the summer.  See you all on the other side.

All of you who have been following my career,  probably already know that in recent years I have been working at the  Zhongxing Sports Trauma Hospital  in Guangzhou. It is run by the Niu Family from Hebei, which has a very long and rich tradition in Chinese orthopedics and ancient bone setting.    Although my title within the hospital is "Research Fellow" , I was originally employed as a doctor, and I am now moved into developing their department for  Spinal Deformities Corrections and Research . This task brings together several of my skills in  Tendon and Fascia Reconditioning Manipulations  (which I personally developed over a decade ago), my martial training and traditional herbal traumatology.    Seeing how well kids respond to a combination of Qi Gong exercises,  Schroth  training and breathing, alongside orthopedic acupuncture and related modalities has been one of the most fulfilling times in my life.    At th...