Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: In recent decades, the rapidly growing practices of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine have become professionalised under the banner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Canada. Many consider TCM to be a catch-all term representing the medical theories and practices developed over thousands of years in China. Beyond this broad description, Canadian sources of information lack a comprehensive definition of what TCM is (or is not), and there is little to no discussion of this topic within the discipline. Our study investigates the historical precedents leading up to the formal creation of “Traditional” Chinese Medicine, and how this relates to education, practice and regulation of this new profession in Canada. Methods: Using a qualitative descriptive design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 key informants, including historians, sinologists, translators, policy-makers and practitioners of Chinese Medicine in the United States, Canada and China. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by using thematic analysis. Results: Interview data suggested that TCM is a standardized version of Chinese medicine that was created sixty years ago amidst a period of political turmoil in China. Four key themes were identified: (a) TCM is distinctly modern; (b) TCM is one style of Chinese medicine that is influenced by Western medicine, centered on organ theory, and lacks context; (c) TCM is suited to the healthcare needs of mid-twentieth century China; and (d) TCM is not the problem (but rather the presumptions around it). Conclusion: It appears there is a scholarly consensus that TCM is an invention of contemporary history. There is an urgent need to increase awareness of what TCM is (and what it is best suited to do within a healthcare system) as Canadian provinces move forward with educational and regulatory decisions on this new profession. Faculty Mentor: Darren Tellier Department: Acupuncture
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.037 | 0.064 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".