TCM intern intends to take skills home to Brazil

Fernando Davino, a postgraduate student of traditional Chinese medicine, performs acupunture on a patient at the Institute of Acupunture and Moxibustion of Chinese Medical Sciences. [Photo by Bruno Maestrini/China Daily]

Many patients in Beijing are surprised and even shocked when they first meet one unique practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine.

"Laowai! Laowai!" they often cry, as if there is any question that the muscular 38-year-old intern, who towers over most of his patients at 1.87 meters tall, could be anything but a foreigner.

Fernando Davino, who has worked at six Beijing hospitals while completing his master's degree in TCM, says it usually takes a few days for his patients to respond to him as a doctor. But, by the end of the week, they are requesting that he treat them.

The surprised reaction is just one of many difficulties the Brazilian faces studying a quintessentially Chinese discipline in the country of its origin. Some are minor - his lab coats, although custom-made, are too small for his frame - others are more serious - although he is now fluent in Chinese, in addition to his native Portugese and conversational English, that has not always been the case.

Davino, who is from the city of Ouro Preto, in the state of Minas Gerais, holds two undergraduate diplomas in TCM - one from Brazil and the second from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine - and expects to complete his master's degree next year. For further information of Chinese medicine, please click to learn Ways to improve health with sports in TCM.

His Chinese medicine classes in Brazil were taught in Chinese by Chinese doctors, through interpreters, so Davino was familiar with some medical terms when he arrived in Beijing in 2006. He had none of the Chinese language needed for everyday living, however, and says that, at that time, Beijing was a much more difficult place to live as a foreigner.

"It was 100 percent difficult. I didn't understand anything. Everything I know about the Chinese language, I studied here."

He said it took a long time to make Chinese friends and about six months before he began understanding the language. He thought he would never learn it until a visiting friend was in an automobile accident and Davino needed to help him negotiate the Chinese hospital system.

"He had a lot of paperwork and X-rays. I talked to the doctor and I had to speak in Chinese."

After spending all night at the hospital helping his friend, Davino returned home feeling more confident.

"I had a good feeling. I thought: 'I can do this.' That was my spark moment," he says, after which he no longer worried about being able to succeed here.

Davino's six older brothers are engineers - a profession his home city is renowned for - and businessmen, but he didn't want to become either. Then he realized medicine was also a technical skill.

"I like technology, and I discovered that the human body is the most incredible machine. It's amazing how the body is," he says.

He first started studying Western medicine but soon decided he wanted to specialize in TCM.

He says one of the biggest mistakes people make is to try to compare TCM and Western medicine.

"Chinese medicine is more integrative. It looks to the past, when man had a better relationship with nature.

"They have to be put together. They have different theories, different meanings, different philosophies, but they can help each other."

The difficulties he faces as a TCM practitioner will not cease when he returns to Brazil. The course he began there in 2001 was the first of its kind and, although he received a diploma on graduation, has not yet been recognized by the country's ministry of education. TCM is also not considered medicine in Brazil.

However, he hopes to have his degree validated by a university in Brazil after taking several more classes there to fulfill the institution's requirements. He says there is a precedent of two Chinese graduates of Chinese medicine from his university who complemented their studies in Brazilian federal universities and are now recognized there as doctors.

Davino hopes to be the first Brazilian to achieve the same and then to help others follow his path.

"I want to open a clinic and teach classes," he says. "I want to help the new generation of Brazilian students of Chinese medicine." For further information of Chinese medicine, please click to learn Examples of rehabilitation in TCM.
Abstracted from chinadaily.com.cn.