Vietnam - Medical schools open to everyone?

VietNamNet Bridge - It is now easier than ever to register to study at medical schools to become general practitioners or pharmacists. Some medical schools accept to enroll the students who only had the required minimum scores from the university entrance exams.

Educators believe that medical schools are open only to the best students, who have the learning capability good enough to follow such a difficult major. That explains why state owned medical schools always require very high scores on the students registering to study there.

The HCM City Medical and Pharmaceutical University and the Hanoi Medical University this year only accepted the students who got at least 26 scores from the July’s university entrance exams.

The HCM City National University enrolls the students with at least 24 scores for its medical faculty, and students have to have 23.5 scores at least to be able to study at the Can Tho Medical and Pharmaceutical University.

Meanwhile, people-founded schools only require low scores for medical study. The Vo Truong Toan University in Hau Giang province, which for the first time enrolls students for general practitioner training, only requires 17 scores for the major and 15 scores for pharmacy training.

Other non-state owned schools are still awaiting more registrations for medical and pharmaceutical majors, accepting the students who have the exam scores equal to the floor marks.

Floor marks are the minimum marks students must get from the university entrance exams to be able to register study at any school in Vietnam. The floor marks are announced annually by the Ministry of Education and Training.

Other people founded schools are seeking students for healthcare relating majors, requiring surprisingly low exam scores.

Students have to have 14 scores from the B-group university entrance exam (B-group has three exam subjects – mathematics, chemistry and biology) to be eligible for registering study at medical testing faculty the Hong Bang International University.

The Tay Do and Nguyen Tat Thanh Universities have also announced the enrolment of the students who have minimum required scores for medical relating majors.

Tran Ai Cam, Deputy President of the Nguyen Tat Thanh University, said though the school sets low requirements on students, it has found nine students only.

“Like many other non-state schools, we cannot find the students with high achievements, though we really want to find higher quality learners,” he said.

The fact that schools rush to enroll students for medical training majors with easy conditions has raised big worries about the quality of the practitioners and pharmacists.

Dr Nguyen Duc Nghia, Deputy President of the HCM City National University, emphasized that healthcare training majors should train only excellent students.

“As for healthcare relating majors, we should focus on the training quality instead of running after the quantity,” Nghia said.

A lecturer of the HCM City Medical and Pharmaceutical University also said that the low quality of input students would lead to the low quality of graduates. He has warned that with the current training mechanism, the number of unqualified physicians would be increasing rapidly just in the next 10 years.

He said though Vietnam is lacking healthcare staff, this should not be the reason for schools to ignore the training quality.

“Since physicians’ qualification can decide the life of people, the input students need to be selective to ensure the high quality of graduates,” Nghia said, suggesting that the Ministry of Education and Training needs to set strict requirements on the schools which want to provide medical training. Especially, the schools need to satisfy the requirements in terms of the teaching staff, curriculums and material facilities.

Compiled by Thu Uyen

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