VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Health has given warnings about the bad training quality of medical and pharmaceutical schools, saying that Vietnam will bear consequences in 10 more years.

According to the Ministry of Health, Vietnam generates 6,500 doctors, 2,800 pharmacists, 5,000 bachelor of nursing, medical technicians, public health officers, and 5,100 healthcare postgraduate workers.

There are too many “doctor producers”

A report showed that by the end of 2012, Vietnam had 26 establishments which provides the labor force with the university education to the healthcare sector, 74 junior colleges and 44 intermediate and vocational schools.

However, even if the number of graduates increases by two folds by 2020, Vietnam still lacks workers for the healthcare sector.

This has prompted more and more schools to set up medical faculties to train physicians and nurses. These include the schools which do not have experiences in the training major or do not have deep knowledge about it.

According to the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), 13 universities in Mekong Delta, including 11 people founded schools, provide medicine and pharmacy bachelors. These include the Tan Tao University in Long An province, Vo Truong Toan in Hau Giang and Tay Do in Can Tho City.

However, the training quality of the schools remains doubtful. The problem is that the schools set very low required marks from students. In order to register the study at the Tra Vinh University, a student needs to have 13-14.5 marks from the national university entrance exams only. The higher mark of 17.5 is required on the students who want to follow GP (general practitioner) training.

Meanwhile, the Hanoi Medical School, in order to ensure the high quality of input students, always requires very high marks, 27.5/30 on average. This means that even when getting 9 for every exam subject, students would still fail the exams to study at the school.

Not only in the Mekong Delta, a lot of medical schools have been set up in other localities. The Lac Hong University has got the permission to train 150 pharmacists at university level.

The students who attended the A-group exams (math, physics and chemistry) need to have 16 marks to be eligible for registering study, while the students who attended B-group exams (math, chemistry and biology) need to have 17 marks.

Since the number of medical school students increases rapidly, schools now suffer the serious lack of lecturers. Vo Truong Toan University has to hire the lecturers from the Hue City Medical University, while the students of the Tay Do University have been taught by the lecturers from the Can Tho Medical Junior College.

Immeasurable consequences

The Council of the Presidents of Vietnamese medical and pharmacy schools has voiced its concern about the quality of the training of the labor force for the healthcare sector. It has pointed out that MOET has been too easy in allowing schools to open medical faculties, which leads to the bad training quality.

Nguyen Minh Loi, a senior official of the Ministry of Health, said the training quality at people founded schools is “really worrying”.

Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan has admitted the low training quality of non-state medical schools.

The Ministry of Health has reportedly requested the Ministry of Education and Training to arrange a meeting of the two ministers in late September to discuss the solutions to the existing problems.

NLD