Why DAOM at ACCHS?

The primary goal of most Chinese Medical physicians is to address the root and branches of a patient’s condition, with the intention of helping to facilitate a positive health outcome. In working towards this goal, the study and practice of Chinese Medicine can take on many forms and be guided by diverse philosophies. Two such philosophies are the ideal of the technical expert, who strives towards skillful application of useful protocols, and that of the scholar physician, guided by clinical reasoning based on principles.

By learning protocols, a clinician learns to apply useful treatments to general conditions. Over time most clinicians will have compiled a mental “cheat-sheet” of a number of protocols that they find to be most effective and reliable, and these serve as important tools in their clinical arsenal. By focusing on the application of principles, a Chinese Medicine practitioner learns how to think. They will thus be able to respond to the specific circumstances of each clinical encounter with intelligence and creativity. In this way, medical practice is spontaneous and insightful, and every clinical outcome serves to refine one’s understanding of the application of those theoretical principles.

These principles, or “rules” of Chinese Medicine, that have guided its thought and practice for roughly 2,000 years, were laid out in the Classical texts of the Han Dynasty. These rules are not simply statements to be memorized, but rather inform a worldview that allows us to frame health and disease in a unique and imminently useful way. Furthermore, learning the rules of the system will often allow a practitioner to deduce why or when an empirical approach or protocol is indicated, and so techniques that are generally useful can be employed more deliberately and with greater specificity.