“Improving the quality of public health, easier than you think” is Story 2 from “Philanthropy and Stories” Talkshow. In this episode, our Host Thai Van Linh and guest Ms. Ngoc Linh – CEO, Co-Founder of Center for Health Innovation Research (CHIR) – will bring you useful information on how we can improve the quality of treatment and patient safety at public hospitals and health facilities in Vietnam. Let’s take a look at the 5 key takeaways from the interview with You Impact below:
1.The biggest challenges to the quality of public health in Vietnam today
One of the biggest challenges is high quality resources for the health industry. People are the most precious capital, the most precious resource. If every health worker has good knowledge, skills and attitudes, then improving health services is within reach.
Nowaday, we have made a lot of efforts, universities have also improved training methods, the Ministry of Health also introduced quality criteria that require hospitals to pay attention to training activities for staff, there are regulations on CME ( continuous training with certificates) etc.. But still not enough and still dealing in a short-term, there are still too many healthcare workers out there who are not supported, trained properly.
There are still many hospitals that can do better, but the inertia is too great, there is no culture of quality improvement. Medical staff are too busy, do not have time to study. The income of medical staff is still too low, thus ,there is no need to study. The training programs are still theoretical, not attached to practice.
Especially the understanding of the Vietnamese people for the health sector, for the process of choosing and using health services is still a problem. “Hundreds of things thanks to the doctor – a hundred things need the doctor”, everyone no matter if they are in serious or not serious conditions, must go to Cho Ray, Bach Mai hospitals to feel secure, “envelope culture”, “introducing letter”, etc.. a lot of wrong things still exist.
2.The reasons we should invest in the learning and development of healthcare professionals in local public and hospital facilities
Medical staff can learn and develop knowledge – skills and attitudes, medical ethics, build a culture of quality improvement and patient safety at hospitals to provide good, safe healthcare services for the people, then we will be able to narrow the gap between the Vietnamese healthcare system and the world. If this is not improved, the price to pay is very high, sometimes even a human life or imprisonment. There have been very sad stories in Vietnam like the story of Dr. Hoang Cong Luong…
3.The solutions that CHIR is implementing to solve these difficulties?
CHIR is focusing on promoting Online Training. Only online training can help reach all hospitals, including remote areas. It is able to reduce training costs and provide access to most medical staff in the local communities.
CHIR helps each medical staff to LEARN FOR REAL – DO FOR REAL, learning must have results that can be applied to work and life, together with the companionship of different experts and fellow students during their study.. CHIR must create a POSITIVE LEARNING – POSITIVE SHARING environment.
4. Impact of CHIR’s projects
CHIR supports Vietnam Sweden Uong Bi hospital. On the first day of the training, many medical staff still did not know: What is quality management, patient safety. A very difficult activity in building a quality culture was that employees had to report a mishap to find the root cause and opportunities for quality improvement for the hospital. Most hospitals in Vietnam at that time chose a culture of collective silence, a culture of hiding incidents. Before training day, the hospital reported 5-6 incidents in two years. After more than 2 years of working with CHIR, many training courses for nearly 1000 medical staff, incidents reported within 1 year raised up to 3000-4000 incidents. CHIR and the hospital held a workshop to share experiences with medical staff from many provinces, including representatives from the Department of Medical Examination and Treatment – Ministry of Health.
Then coordinate with Hai Phong and Phu Yen health departments to organize two more experience sharing seminars. Currently, this model CHIR has been replicated to more than 40 hospitals thanks to funding from ASIF – AUSTRALIA and is continuing to spread.
5. Long-term wishes for this project and the ways to participate.
CHIR E-Learning offers that each medical staff only needs 500,000 VND/year to choose and study any topic that CHIR has developed and published on the platform. They study for an average of 3 months, then submit the assignment to share their learning results, and how they apply the results to their work & life.
If the submitted assignment were good, it proves the philosophy: LEARN FOR REAL – DO FOR REAL, the student will immediately receive a CHIR E-learning scholarship, be selected and continue to study another program. Just like that in a year, you can learn 3-4 very useful and practical knowledge topics with only 500,000 VND.
In addition, medical staff also have peer groups studying the same topic for activities, discussions and connections. Every 2 months, there will be at least one exchange/talk with lecturers.
Our CHIR experts/lecturers are carefully selected, who are enthusiastic members with practical experience, who want to give back and engage in CHIR’s community mission.
Besides, other people can support a medical staff in your locality or a health worker who is taking care of you to study at CHIR. You can buy a voucher of 500,000 VND for their study, refer them to www.chirvn.org for them to choose a course and enroll themselves, or you sign up – pay the fee and they choose the course.
Or you can contribute to CHIR’s scholarship fund, CHIR will select medical staff who are worthy of your support and report the student’s learning results to you.
Information to contribute to CHIR’s Scholarship Fund:
▪︎ Bank Account Name:
Health Innovation Research Center Social Company Limited
Account number: 19135150578012 – Techcombank – HCMC
Transfer description: Name of individual/organization – Scholarship grant for medical staff
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Watch the full 2nd episode here:
