My Journey of becoming a TCM Physician Chap 15: Before The Return to Singapore

It was the end of the journey in China at the end of two years of internship and all I can remember now was a period of frenzy when we have to start selling away things, pack things into large cartons to be shipped back, do any last minute shopping or Taobao-ing for anything we wanted to get back to Singapore.

Among the mess of logistics and administrations, what was on the back of our minds were of course, our future. But the first hurdle was our status and license.

So the hybrid of Biomedical Science and Traditional Chinese Medicine was initially meant to create a pool of lab researchers for Chinese Medicine herbs. BUT, sadly and ironically, being the pioneer batch for this new unheard combi, we all entered and went through the course aspiring to become science-based TCM doctors, rather than TCM-based scientists.

So having to graduate from the course was not the end of the journey, because we all knew we needed to go through one more big trial. Basically without the license, you are not a doctor and you cannot touch patients. Without the license you would be just an academician. So the pressure was really there. And preparation for the license exam already started when we were still packing up for home. I still remembered the four letter name of the exam. The S-T-R-E. It was like going through O levels and A levels exams again where we needed to redo the so-called Ten Years Series for STRE this time for at least 10 times. But that was not all for the license exam. It was only the start of the slow torture as more last minute changes and new policies were enforced on us. Just that we happened to discover more new rules of the Game only when we were back to Singapore. And to make it more ‘fun’, the rules changed at random.

Sounds familiar?