The challenges of an internship in China

Five days a week I spend half a day observing Dr. Peng Jian treat patients in a variety of different situations. On Tuesdays, he sees patients the 1st Affiliated Hospital of the Hunan University of TCM. As the hospital has a computerized prescription system, he has taught himself to use the patient management software and types all prescriptions directly into the computer. This is great for me as an observer, as it is a piece of cake to read the names of the herbs he is prescribing. Like in printed material, computers use very standard and clear fonts for Chinese characters. On the other days of the week, however, it is a different situation altogether.

At the Bai Cao Tang clinic where he sees most of his patients, there is nothing on the desk but a lamp and a small cushion used for taking the pulse. The absence of a computer screen and keyboard changes the interaction slightly, in my observation: patients at the hospital always seem a bit anxious as he hesitantly taps away at the keyboard, and they often express concern about leaving the room empty-handed (the prescription is automatically entered into the computer system). In the Bai Cao Tang clinic, however, as soon as he puts pen to paper the patient and those accompanying them settle into a half-trance, only broken by his further questioning as he makes adjustments to their formula.

From my point of view, there is a huge difference between having a digital prescription vs a hand-written one in terms of my access to information: I can hardly read his handwriting!

Generally speaking, it is more difficult to read hand-written characters than it is printed characters. Additionally, it is a standard stereotype that doctor's handwriting is quite difficult to read . . . but Dr. Peng really hits it out of the ball park when he writes formulas!

Using the app 'Turboscan' on my iPhone, I spent one week making PDFs of every single prescription that Dr. Peng wrote (over 200 pages!). I printed them out, and with the help of his other students, who carefully record the details of each patient visit, I am now going through each printout and am writing the characters for each herb next to his 'too beautiful'* version.

FYI, the herbs in the image are: 生地30克 地骨皮30克 赤芍10克 丹皮10克 水牛角30克 桃仁10克 白鲜皮30克 首乌30克 荆芥10克 防风10克 白蒺藜30克

* This is a common way to joke about somebody's messy handwriting - to say that it is 'too beautiful' to read.