Dr. Joon Hee Lee started teaching at NUNM in 2011 as adjunct faculty and joined as full-time faculty in 2012. Fluent in classical literary Chinese, Dr. Lee has been studying and teaching Chinese medical classics including the Shanghan Lun (Discourse on cold damage), Jingui Yaolüe (Essential prescriptions and discourse from the Golden Cabinet) and Huangdi Neijing (Yellow emperor’s inner classic), the very foundational texts of Chinese medicine. He has been diligent in applying and proving the principles and instructions of these classics and their efficacies in clinic.

In clinical practice, Dr. Lee values objective patient assessment skills. Besides traditional pulse taking and tongue diagnosis, he has been interested in developing various palpation and “listening” skills. He studied and applied in clinic the works of Yoshimasu Todo, an 18th-century Japanese physician who advocated the importance of abdominal palpation in practicing herbal medicine. Also, he has been learning and applying osteopathic palpation techniques into his practice. Dr. Lee values these methods because they not only offer an opportunity to assess the state of patient body objectively, but also directly inform the practitioner appropriate actions, such as specific acupuncture points to needle, or specific herbs and formula to use.