Doctoral Dissertation Research: Transmitting Diagnostic Skills in Tibetan Medicine: Embodied Practices for Indigenous Categories of Cancer

埃默里大学博士生Tawni L.Tidwell将在Carol M.Worthman博士的指导下，研究人类如何创造和教授复杂的知识系统的生物文化理解。研究的重点将集中在医学知识和认识论是如何概念化、传播，然后在实践技能中实施的。以藏医为例，她将考察诊断是如何在这个有2000年历史的基于文本、口头指导和实际实施的非西方系统中正式传播、培养和临床应用的。是什么学习过程和相关的社会文化结构支持这样一个系统的诊断技能的制定？关于复杂的知识系统的传递，这些过程告诉了我们什么呢？作为首屈一指的藏医学校门洞岗的第一名西方学生，蒂德韦尔将与藏医学生同行、教员和一群专家医生一起进行调查。她将记录诊断技能是如何传播、培养和应用的，特别是关于一种名为Dres-Nad的藏医疾病类别。对dres-nad的关注具有战略意义，因为dres-nad和生物医学癌症是藏医和西方生物医学系统最紧密重叠的疾病类别。因此，这种重叠打开了一个空间，在其中阐明这两个诊断和护理系统的不同特点。通过课堂参与者观察、学生和教职员工访谈以及专家医生临床观察，蒂德韦尔将研究身体情境知识如何与知识实践系统相互作用的这些过程、影响和方法，以发展技能发展，并将这些技能进一步发展为与Dres-NAD相关的专门知识。这项研究将通过启发复杂、严格和系统的非西方医疗体系中的医学教育，为复杂知识体系的传播提供洞察力。这项研究将促进国际研究合作和伙伴关系。资助这项研究还支持研究生的教育。

Emory University doctoral candidate Tawni L. Tidwell, supervised by Dr. Carol M. Worthman, will investigate biocultural understandings of how humans create and teach complex knowledge systems. The focus of the research will be on how medical knowledge and epistemologies are conceptualized, transmitted, and then enacted in practical skill. Using Tibetan medicine as a case study, she will examine how diagnosis is formally transmitted, cultivated, and clinically deployed, in this 2,000 year-old text-based, orally-instructed, and practically-implemented non-Western system. What are the learning processes and related sociocultural structure that support such a system in its enactment of diagnostic skill? What do these processes tell us about the transmission of complex knowledge systems more generally?As the first western student in Men-Tsee-Khang, the premier Tibetan medical school, Tidwell will undertake her investigation with Tibetan medical student peers, faculty, and a group of expert physicians. She will document how diagnostic skills are transmitted, cultivated and applied, with particular regard to a Tibetan medical illness category called dres-nad. The focus on dres-nad is strategic because dres-nads and biomedical cancers are the illness categories in which the Tibetan medical and western biomedical systems most closely overlap. As such, this overlap opens a space in which to elucidate the distinctive features of the two systems of diagnosis and care. Through class participant-observation, student and faculty interviews, and expert physician clinical observations, Tidwell will look at these processes, influences and methods of how situated knowledge of the body interacts with knowledge practice systems to develop skill development and further such skills toward expertise with specific regard to dres-nad. This research will provide insight into the transmission of complex systems of knowledge by illuminating medical education in a sophisticated, rigorous and systematic non-Western medical system. The study will facilitate international research collaborations and partnerships. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.