Programme Details:

This panel situates Chinese medicine in Singapore, and looks at humanistic, clinical and sociological approaches to medicine in the region. Medical humanities as a field has drawn physicians' gaze beyond the silo of biomedical knowledge, to examine patient cultures, in terms of their agency, experience, and the role of disability, to name a few. As a field of Western origin, Medical Humanities has so far failed to address an area of critical concern in Asia, namely local medical cultures. Be they Chinese, Malay or South Asian, local medical cultures are part of the lifeway and heritage of Singapore's population.  This panel makes headway into this topic by looking at polypharmacy, clinical teaching and sociological studies of patient populations' motivations to adopt traditional forms of care.