Vietnamese doctors study in Australia
Elizabeth Heath
24 July 2007
The University's Hoc Mai Foundation has secured $360,000 from AusAID under the Australian Leadership Awards (ALA) scheme to bring 24 health professionals from Vietnam to study medical practice in Australian teaching hospitals.
Hoc Mai ('forever learning' in Vietnamese) promotes the exchange of teaching and learning between Australian and Vietnamese health care workers.
In June three winners of the Hoc Mai Foundation's Vietnamese scholarships, Dr Nguybn Anh Tuan, Dr Cao Viet Tung and Dr Nguyen Duc Chinh, arrived in Sydney to start a three month training period. A further 13 Vietnamese health professionals came to Australia in July for training at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Royal North Shore Hospital.
Dr Tuan, a specialist in emergency health care, is studying at Royal North Shore Hospital. He said: "I wanted to learn about the health care systems of developed countries and observe the differences in operation from my home country. Efficiency is a big problem in Vietnamese hospitals and the health care system in general.
"Australia is a leader in the use of new technology in hospitals. I wanted to find out how this is used in the treatment of patients. We can observe the health care system here, with a view to improvements that can be made back home."
Dr Chinh, a trauma care specialist, will spend his training period at hospitals in Adelaide and Tasmania.
"Trauma care is a large problem in Vietnamese hospitals with a large number of fatalities. Another serious problem in Vietnam is the lack of properly skilled medical practitioners and professionals, and this is an area which Hoc Mai's scholarships help to address directly," he said.
Professor Bruce Robinson, Dean of Medicine and chair of Hoc Mai -which began as an educational exchange program between Sydney University and Hanoi Medical University in 1998 - says the program has grown from modest beginnings.
"It now exchanges doctors, nurses, and other health professionals between Australia and Vietnam, is running a maternal and child health education program in Vietnam and has developed an e-health link between the two countries.
"Our patron is the new Chancellor, Professor Marie Bashir, who has been teaching psychiatry in Vietnam for nearly 20 years.
"The program also provides University of Sydney students with health care experience in a developing country. They all return changed by the experience," said Professor Robinson.
Hoc Mai is planning a conference in Hanoi on 3 and 4 December to discuss health care issues and develop new collaborative links.
AusAID's leadership awards are given to people who are already leaders or have a potential to assume leadership roles that can influence social and economic policy reform.
Contact: Elizabeth Heath
Phone: 02 9351 3168