Kampo Medical Education for University Students of Health Education / 日本東洋医学雑誌

Many of the students belonging to the School of Health and Social Services will be responsible for health education in the future, and it is important that they have an understanding of the importance of Kampo medicine and the ability to give appropriate guidance in the field. But their educational goals need discussing. We conducted lectures on Kampo medicine with medical school students towards this end, and conducted before and after questionnaire surveys to gauge their effect. Students with a desirable degree of awareness toward Kampo medicine in Japanese society increased from 58.0 ± 15.4% to 88.5 ± 10.2%, and students judging Kampo as either useful or extremely useful rose from 58.4% to 95.9%. It is our hope that, with the raised awareness from these lectures as a base, these students will go on to engage in suitable medical educational activities in the future.

Evaluation of a simulator for teaching clinicians abdominal palpation in the kampo style / 医学教育

In kampo medicine, an illness is considered to affect the entire body, even if the symptoms appear only in the abdomen. Abdominal palpation is considered an important diagnostic physical examination in kampo medicine. Because learning the kampo style of abdominal palpation is difficult, we attempted to simplify the process by developing typical models of 6 important kampo abdominal diagnoses (shinka-hiko, kyokyo-kuman, fukuchokukin-renkyu, shofuku-fujin, shofuku-koman, and shinkabu-shinsuion).1) When we discussed abdominal palpation in lectures on kampo medicine for clinicians we also assessed the opinions and impressions of participants about the abdominal palpation simulators. 2) We administered an anonymous questionnaire survey about interest in kampo medicine, the understanding of abdominal palpation in the kampo style, and an evaluation of the abdominal palpation simulators. We obtained 149 replies from participants of the 11 lectures. 3) Of the participating physicians, 85.2% were interested in kampo medicine. However, 23.5% of physicians were not familiar with abdominal palpation in the kampo style. 4) Furthermore, 58.4% of physicians thought that kampo-style abdominal palpation was explained well or very well in the lecture with the abdominal palpation simulators. The abdominal palpation simulators were judged to be useful or very useful by 72.2% of the physicians. 5) In conclusion, the abdominal palpation simulators were considered to be useful for learning abdominal palpation in the kampo style, even though these simulators have some shortcomings. These models may be useful for simplifying the learning of abdominal palpation by students of kampo medicine.

Improvement of A Simulator Production Project for Abdominal Palpation in Kampo Medical Training / 日本東洋医学雑誌

In Kampo medicine, sickness is regarded as affecting the whole body even though the symptoms may appear obvious only in the abdomen. This makes abdominal palpation an important means of physical examination, and diagnosis. Because learning abdominal palpation in the Kampo style is very difficult, we attempted to simplify learning by building typical anatomical abdomen models for training. To create six abdominal models : Shinka-hiko, Kyokyo-kuman, Fukuchokukin-renkyu, Shofuku-fujin, Shofuku-koman, and Shinkabu-sinsuion, we employed several materials, including artificial leather for epidermal tissue, pile fabric for subcutaneous tissue, cotton cloth or jersey cloth for membrane tissue, polyurethane or natural rubber for muscle tissue, specialized polyester resin for costae, and cotton for internal organs. We employed a harder polyurethane, for example, in Shinka-hiko to simulate resistance in the region beneath the heart, in Kyokyo-kuman to simulate resistance in the subcostal region, and in Shofuku-koman to simulate horseshoe-shaped resistance in the lower abdominal region. Otherwise, in Shofuku-fujin, a lack of resistance was simulated by a defect in the polyurethane at the center of the lower abdominal region. Shinkabu-sinsuion was modeled using a water dabbling sound via a water-filled balloon that could be gently shaken with the fist in the region above the navel. Fukuchokukin-renkyu was modeled as excessive strain of the rectus abdominis muscles via the use of natural rubber. We tried to represent the tenderness on pressure at the para-umbilical region, cecal region, and sigmoid region in the Shofuku-koman model by making a specialized switch with conducting rubber, and using electric device and battery. We believe these models are useful teaching devices, in that they simplify Kampo abdominal palpitation training.