The quality of training as well as personnel qualification in the healthsector falls short of actual requirements, experts said at a meetingheld recently in Hanoi.

Attending the meeting on May 29 wereDeputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, officials of the ministries ofEducation and Training (MOET) and Health (MOH), and representatives ofseveral medical schools.

Concerns were expressed that some of therecently opened medical schools were not offering quality educationwith their students unable to receive proper training and practice. As aresult, the students were also finding it difficult to apply for jobs.

Afterdiscussing the current education model and comparing it with othercountries, meeting participants agreed that medical training would haveto be upgraded in order to improve workforce quality and meet actualneeds of the health sector in protecting and taking care of residents'health.

Vo Tan Son, former principal of the HCM City Medicine andPharmacy University, said that to improve workforce quality in thehealth sector, medical students should begin studies in theirspecialties as soon as they finish the regular six-year course ingeneral medicine.

Practice should happen alongside the study ofspecial subjects and a system should be set up that can accuratelyassess the graduate's abilities, he said.

Deputy PM Dam saidmedical training requirements should be set out in detail andinternational models accessed in order to come up with a proper trainingmodel here.

He asked the MOET and MOH to define knowledgerequirements for each level in the medical training system, includingundergraduate, master and doctorate degrees. They should also determinethe proper training period for each level, he said.

The Deputy PMalso said the two ministries should issue circulars and documents tostrengthen training quality in the health sector.

He emphasisedthe need for hospitals to partner medical schools so that the lattergets to know real demands and provides students with needed practice.-VNA