Evaluation of Kampo Education with a Focus on the Selected Core Concepts

Objective: Japanese medical schools currently only offer students traditional Japanese Kampo medicine education for an extremely limited amount of time. The purpose of this study was to discover how to generate interest in and motivate learning Kampo medicine. Methods: Kampo medical sessions, including a lecture series, written examinations, and small-group (12-14 students) EBL (experience-based learning) sessions, were provided for 4th-year medical students (N=117) at Tokai University School of Medicine. Students were taught about "qi, blood, and fluid" and the "deficiency-excess pattern," the two most important core concepts of Kampo medicine and connecting them to clinical application. We evaluated the teaching methods based on questionnaires and written examinations before and after the training course. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare changes in awareness before and after the lectures and the Mann Whitney U test to examine the relationship between the students' interest in Kampo medicine and their examination scores. Results: This training method improved students' general understanding of Kampo medicine and increased their interest and motivation to study Kampo medicine. Conclusion: Considering the current status of Kampo education, this training method is effective to educate students in the basic concepts of Kampo medicine.