JCPSLP Vol 15 No 2 2013

Clinical education

Viet Nam’s first qualified speech therapists The outcome of a collaborative international partnership Lindy McAllister, Sue Woodward, Marie Atherton, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung, Claude Potvin, Huynh Bich Thao, Le Thi Thanh Xuan and Le Khanh Dien

Viet Nam’s first qualified speech therapists graduated on 21 September 2012. Eighteen graduate health professionals (nurses, physiotherapists and medical practitioners) completed a two-year speech therapy course made possible by a partnership between Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine, the Ear Nose and Throat Hospital of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Australian Volunteers International and Trinh Foundation Australia. These 18 pioneering graduates have now returned to their hospitals and disability services in HCMC and Hue to establish speech therapy services. This paper describes the roles of the major partners in this significant international development activity, overviews the course content, structure and challenges, changes for the second intake of students in the course, and highlights future developments in speech therapy in Viet Nam. A n estimated 15.7% of the 87 million people in Viet Nam have a disability (Mont & Cuong, 2011) and between 17–27% of these people may have problems with speech and hearing (Kane, 1999). A range of internal drivers (e.g., health, education and social policy reforms, decreasing rates of poverty and increasing survival rates) coupled with external drivers such as the Millennium Development Goals (United Nations Development Program, 2000), improved access to information technology and awareness of rehabilitation trends internationally have created a demand and climate supportive of speech therapy 1 service developments in Viet Nam. This paper describes the partnership between Vietnamese and international organisations to develop and successfully conduct the first speech therapy course in Viet Nam. It briefly overviews the speech therapy course, and concludes with the views of some graduates about the course and the future of speech therapy in Viet Nam. Course partners Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital HCMC The Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) Hospital provides inpatient and outpatient services to hundreds of thousands of

patients each year from the south of Viet Nam. Professor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung is director of the ENT Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), professor of ENT at Pham Ngoc Thach University (PNTU) of Medicine, and as of January 2013 Rector of PNTU. She spent time as an ENT intern in Lyon, France, where she learned about speech therapy. On her return to HCMC, Professor Dung provided training in speech therapy to nurses at the ENT Hospital and sought opportunities for further training from visiting medical specialists and speech therapists. Her dream of starting a speech therapy training course was enabled through meeting Sue Woodward (now a director of the Trinh Foundation Australia) in HCMC in 2007. The ENT Hospital has been a major clinical education site for the speech therapy training course. Professor Dung provided advice on the recruitment of students, approval of curriculum content and development of clinical education sites for the first course. Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine is a municipal university of HCMC offering courses in medicine, nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy and medical laboratory sciences. It was receptive to approaches in 2008 from Professor Dung to host a two-year training course in speech therapy. Since the course was established, PNTU has managed admission of the speech therapy students, payment of local lecturers, and through Dr Vo Hoang Nhan, liaison between the course and local hospitals and clinics for clinical education, with other Vietnamese agencies, and the local People’s Committee who allow the course to be delivered. Trinh Foundation Australia Trinh Foundation Australia (TFA) was created in response to a request from Professor Dung for assistance to develop speech therapy training in Viet Nam. The founding directors of TFA had all worked in hospitals and institutions across Viet Nam as orthodontists or SLPs so were aware of the urgent need for such training programs in order to improve the quality of life of Vietnamese people with communication and swallowing disorders. Steps were undertaken in 2008 to establish TFA and meet Australian government requirements to operate as a non-government organisation, to manage, fund and resource this endeavour. A key priority was to gain approval through the People’s Aid Coordinating Committee and the HCMC Union of Friendship Organisation to operate in Viet Nam. TFA initiated partnerships, both within Australia and in Viet Nam,

Keywords speech- language pathology speech therapy

university education partnerships Viet Nam This article has been peer- reviewed

Lindy McAllister (top), Sue Woodward (centre) and Marie Atherton,

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JCPSLP Volume 15, Number 2 2013

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au