VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam is seriously lacking the labor force for the healthcare sector. Meanwhile, the HCM City Education and Training Department has reported that only 50 percent of medical school graduates can find the jobs as trained.

50 percent of workforce wasted

Dr. Tran Xuan Mai, Deputy President of the Hong Bang International University admitted that only a half of the graduates can find jobs.

“The 50 percent of unemployed graduates is an overly high percentage, which shows a big waste of money and resources. Meanwhile, Vietnam is a poor country,” Mai said, adding that it’s to blame the healthcare establishments on the waste.

Meanwhile, labor experts have pointed out that hospitals and healthcare centers tend to be reluctant to hire the workers graduating from private schools, because they think the graduates are not capable enough. In general, only the graduates of state owned schools are accepted.

In principle, most state owned medical schools’ students are excellent schools. Most of them have very high marks from the national university entrance exams (27/30 at least). Therefore, state owned schools’ graduates are believed to have better qualification than private schools’ graduates.

The representative of Anh Sang Intermediary School (2-year training), said that healthcare establishments make a mistake when refusing private schools’ graduates. He said that unqualified workers can be found not only among private school but also among state owned school graduates.

Problems in training

As such, the biggest reason behind the high unemployment rate is the doubtful quality of the private school graduates.

Private schools have called on to set up the required standards on medical school graduates. If this can be done, medical school graduates would be able to meet the requirements of healthcare establishments. Meanwhile, hospitals, when understanding the actual ability of the candidates, would not be reluctant to recruit workers. All the candidates who can meet the standards would have the same opportunities to get the jobs at healthcare centers.

Dr. Le Quang Nghiem, Vice President of the Pham Ngoc Thach Medical University agreed that it’s necessary to set up training standards for medical schools, like any other training majors.

Dr. Pham Dang Dieu from the same school also said that the problem about the graduates’ jobs would be settled, if the schools can satisfy the requirements of the recruiters.

He noted that currently, the requirements on graduates set up by recruiters are different from the standards set by educators.

In the healthcare sector, according to the international practice, the graduates finishing 6-year training can only obtain basic knowledge and skills.

As such, the schools and healthcare establishments need to obtain agreements on the required standards for graduates.

Dr. Phan Thi Thu Anh from the Hanoi Medical University also said that if there are no common standards for different schools, employers would find it hard to decide who to employ. Meanwhile, the lack of standards prompted schools to train medical students in a massive scale, while they do not care about the training quality.

Nguyen Tan Binh, Director of the HCM City Healthcare Department agreed, citing an example that the Pham Ngoc Thach University, which has good material facilities and teaching staff, only trains 400 learners for each training course. Meanwhile, some other schools enroll 1,000 students.

Le Huyen