Ho Chi Minh City has just held the conference ”Orientation Bachelor of Paramedic Nursing Training in Viet Nam and  Integrated Practice Solutions between Training Pre-Hospital Emergency and Health Care at Home.”

 

At the conference, Assoc. Prof. Dr. NGO MINH XUAN – President of Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine (Ho Chi Minh City) – said that the situations of an aging population and increased life expectancy (the current average life expectancy of people in Viet Nam over 74 years), especially of the health care needs of patients and elderly citizens,  are a great challenge to the health service, whereas the training of health workers in the field has not really been serious, and there is a lack of manpower. Pre-hospital training is a very important issue for Viet Nam today, not only for hospitals but also for the whole community. However, our country has not havd a formal training system for this field, the training schools have not been able to devise the code for the bachelor of paramedic nursing.

Also, according to Dr. Xuan, managing the health of the elderly and patients effectively is always a difficult problem for managers. In the past few years, there have been many models associated with each stage of development in each country. Currently, the home health care model is showing many advantages in terms of economy, society, expertise, and science. Accordingly, in 2017, the Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine collaborated with Saimaa University of Applied  Sciences (Finland) to train bachelor’s degrees in nursing and paramedic nursing.

“Students are training for the nursing bachelor, then specialized training in pre- hospital emergency. After graduation, they can both implement pre-hospital emergency and health care at home” Dr. Xuan emphasized.

Dr. Nguyen Minh Loi  – Deputy Director General of the Department of Science, Technology & Training, Ministry of Health – also said that today’s human resource training of health workforce still faces many shortcomings. Specifically, the scale of training has not been linked to the needs and requirements of the health system; many training levels and career capacity are not yet associated with the job position, the qualifications are not yet clearly defined; the scope of professional activities has not yet been determined and the areas that need specialized training are yet to be determined. Especially, starting a new field is still difficult due to lack of mechanism, lack of instructors, unidentified career capacity and job placement of trainees.

Accordingly, with the training program for bachelor of nursing and the integrated solution between pre-hospital emergency and health care at home, Dr. Loi recommends that it is necessary to evaluate the pilot training program, survey the advanced learning needs, raise the graduate level, or change careers according to current regulations; propose standards and criteria on the required professional competence of learners and the conditions for practicing after graduation. In addition, the units need to evaluate the effectiveness of the integration of the two programs in Ho Chi Minh City and expand it to major cities across the country. Based on the available evidence, the University needs to propose a new training code and a new graduate curriculum for this training program.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. CAO VAN THINH  (Dean, Nursing and Medical Technology, Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine, Head of the Thoracic and Vascular Surgery Unit in District 2 Hospital) said that many health facilities have now put into operation the pre-hospital emergency model. However, the pre-hospital emergency work  has not achieved the desired effect, wasted resources and time, and the doctors’ income is low. Therefore, the integration of pre-hospital emergency with home health care needs to meet important goals: Increase income for doctors; strengthen professional work and bring many benefits to patients”…

According to Dr. Thinh, at District 2 Hospital, patients using the above model are covered by health insurance, so there is almost no additional charge. Besides, getting health care at home does not take time to wait at the hospital. Accordingly most patients have positive feedback and expect the model to be deployed more widely,…