非中国传统文化基础教育背景的留学生在学习以辨证论治为中心的中医课程时，容易对中医产生疑问，甚至认为以症状为中心的中医个体化诊疗体系是故弄玄虚。以症状为中心，尝试将西医的疾病亚型与中医的辨证论治相对应，同时利用以问题为导向的教学法（problem-based learning，PBL）对留学生开展中医教学，有利于激发留学生学习中医的兴趣，促进留学生深入理解中医理论，使中西医结合教学更具可行性。此教学法同样适用于“西学中”的教育。

Foreign students who have not received the basic education of traditional Chinese culture tend to have doubts about traditional Chinese medicine when they are studying the traditional Chinese medicine centered on syndrome differentiation and treatment. They even think that the individualized diagnosis and treatment system of traditional Chinese medicine centered on symptoms is nonsense. By trying to make the subtypes of disease in western medicine correspond to the syndrome differentiation and treatment of traditional Chinese medicine centered on syndrome, the problem-based learning (PBL) is used to carry out the teaching of traditional Chinese medicine for foreign students, which can stimulate their interests in learning traditional Chinese medicine, promote them to deeply understand the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, and make the teaching of integrated Chinese and western medicine more feasible. This teaching method is also applicable to education for doctors of western medicine learning traditional Chinese medicine.