Background

“New medical science” policy of the Chinese Ministry of Education, a reform of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) teaching and training curriculum has been underway for some years.

Aim

To assess whether the final examination results, questionnaire survey of general pathology and TCM scores are related to traditional education.

Materials and Methods

We selected the traditional teaching grades of 2016, 2017 and 2018 as our research objects and used statistical software to analyze the final examination and questionnaire results of pathology.

Results

Compared to the mean student score in the 2016 control group, the research grades of 2017 (80.0±9.3, p<0.001) and 2018 (81.8±11.6, p<0.001) were significantly different. Comparing the questionnaire survey results of the research and control group, there were significant differences between the 2016 and 2017 results in terms of learning interest, teachers’ mastery of TCM theory and students’ comprehension ability (p=0.088, 0.005 and 0.0003, respectively). There were significant differences in learning interest, teachers’ mastery of TCM theory and teachers’ mastery of TCM theory between the 2016 and 2018 results (p=0.038, < 0.001 and 0.001, respectively).

Conclusion

The content of “pathology” courses in higher TCM education in China is related to Western Medical Pathology (WMP) to some extent and has a mutually beneficial effect. Second, the ideas of reforming pathology courses in higher TCM education should be explored via convergence of TCM and Western pathology theories. Third, our study provides useful lessons for building a high-level application-oriented talent training system and a first-grade pathology course for TCM majors.