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ACQ Volume 12, Number 1 2010 51
academic training of professional speech therapists with
a 4-year baccalaureate degree or a 2-year postgraduate
degree. With the help of Australian speech therapists via the
Trinh Foundation Australia and Project Boomerang, we will
set up the beginnings of a long-term training program and
the graduate speech therapists will continue our mission of
training, and help improve the quality of life of our patients.
A Memorandum of Understanding with Pham Ngoc Thach
(Municipal) Medical University was signed on 13 October
2009 to commence a full-time, 2-year postgraduate
diploma in speech therapy in late 2010. The university
will need considerable support from volunteer Australian
speech therapists to provide a high quality course until their
graduates can be trained to take over running of the course.
Summary
A growing cadre of partially trained and fully qualified speech
therapists in Viet Nam, together with a demand for speech
therapy services in public and private facilities points to a
future of developing and sustaining a speech therapy service
and profession in Viet Nam. The Australian and Vietnamese
speech therapists who have co-written this article are
actively working together with their respective hospitals,
universities and governments to create a sustainable
university-based degree in speech therapy, based initially in
HCMC. Development of the curriculum and academic
governance processes for the program is well underway,
with the vital support of the ENT Hospital of HCMC and The
Trinh Foundation Australia. Achievement of this goal will
require support from Australian speech therapists to help
resource the program and provide teaching of the first
cohorts of students, and later for ongoing professional
development for the new graduates.
References
Clarke, S., Roberts, A., White, J., & McAllister, L. (2002).
Clinical placements in Vietnam: Students’ stories of their
experiences of developing intercultural competence. Paper
presented at the annual conference of Speech Pathology
Australia, Melbourne, May 2002.
Landis, P., & Pham, T. T. C. (1975). Articulation pattern
and speech intelligibility of 54 Vietnamese children
with unoperated oral clefts: Clinical observations and
impressions. Cleft Palate Journal, 12(2), 234–245.
McAllister, L., Whiteford, G., Hill, R., & Thomas, N. (2006).
Learning and reflection in professional inter-cultural experience:
Qualitative study. Journal of Reflective Practice, 7(3), 367–381.
McAllister, L. & Whiteford, G. (2008). Facilitating
clinical decision making in students in intercultural
fieldwork placements. In J. Higgs, M. Jones, S. Loftus,
& N. Christensen (Eds.), Clinical reasoning in the health
professions. (3rd ed.) (pp. 357–365). Sydney: Elsevier.
Whiteford, G. & McAllister, L. (2006). Politics and complexity
in intercultural fieldwork: The Vietnam experience. Australian
Occupational Therapy Journal, Supp 1, 54, S74–83.
Zbar, R. I. S., Rai, S.M., & Dingman D.L., (2000).
Establishing cleft malformation surgery in developing nations:
A model for the new millennium. Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery, 106(4), 886–891.
Currently, I am vice dean in the Faculty of Special
Education and train students who will be teachers at special
and inclusive schools and children’s hospitals. I teach
courses in audiology, language development for children
with HI, early intervention and inclusive education for CwDs,
and how to educate children with language difficulties.
In addition, I have been directly supporting children with
language difficulties and consulting with parents. I am
interested in working with children with HI and children who
stutter. I would love speech-language therapists in foreign
countries, especially Australia, to share the Lidcombe
Programme with us. I have studied its theoretical framework
but have not yet been trained to implement it. It is crucial for
Viet Nam to develop formal training courses for teachers to
teach them how to help develop language for the children
they work with, and for doctors and nurses who work with
people with communication impairments. We also need to
develop research programs in communication development
and impairments in Viet Nam.
Nguy ~ên Thi. Ngo. c Dung
Director, ENT Hospital, HCMC
President of Vietnamese ORL Society
Professor and Chairperson, ENT Department,
Medicine and Pharmacy University, HCMC
Vice Chairperson, ENT Department, Municipal
Medical University Pham Ngoc Thach, HCMC
I am director of the ENT Hospital in HCMC, responsible for
ENT patients in the south of Viet Nam as well as HCMC. Our
hospital also has a role in teaching medical students and
postgraduate doctors who study to become ENT specialists.
I am also the professor and chairperson of the ENT
Department at the Medicine and Pharmacy University and
vice chairperson of the ENT Department of the Municipal
Medical University Pham Ngoc Thach, both in HCMC. In
addition, I have served as president of the National
Vietnamese Otolaryngological Society since 2004.
I spent 1992 in Lyon, France as an ENT intern in the
Hospital Edouard Herriott. Where I worked had an audio-
phonology department which trained speech therapists, so
in the afternoons, after finishing my work as an ENT doctor,
I followed the speech therapists to learn how to work with
their patients. I have continued to read and study about
speech therapy since then. When I came back to the ENT
Hospital in HCMC, I trained three nurses to work with the
patients, using knowledge from French textbooks and
what I had learned from the speech therapists in France.
I have asked visiting doctors from France, Belgium, and
the Philippines who are specialised in speech or voice
rehabilitation to organise short courses and train our speech
therapists. The speech therapists also develop their own
learning through practice and readings.
At the ENT Hospital, we see many patients who need speech
therapy and we cannot treat all of them due to the lack of
knowledge and lack of staff. We need a formal speech therapy
course. Fortunately I have met people in Project Boomerang
and the Trinh Foundation Australia – Dr Aziz Khan, Mrs Sue
Woodward, and later Professor Lindy McAllister. They have
worked with me to develop a 6-week short course in speech
therapy (described earlier in this article).
There is a growing demand in Viet Nam for speech
therapy services. Currently, speech therapy is offered by
doctors, physiotherapists, nurses and some technicians
who have undertaken short courses in speech therapy,
offered by visiting speech therapists from Australia, USA,
France and the UK. So, for the whole country, we need
Correspondence to:
Lindy McAllister, PhD
Deputy Head, School of Medicine
University of Queensland
Herston Rd, Herston, Qld 4006
phone: +617 3346 5275
email: