Under the Party’s lines on fundamentally, comprehensively reforming education and training as well as directions by the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Ministry of National Defence, fully aware that “the quality of training acts as the deciding factor in the existence and development” of an educational facility, over the years, the Military Medical Academy (MMA) has focused its leadership and direction on raising the quality of education and training via practical, effective measures relevant to the tasks of a centre for military medical training, treatment, and research. As a result, it has gained comprehensive achievements in education and training work alongside considerable improvements in the quality of training, contributing to providing the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) with a contingent of physicians having political steadfastness, great professional expertise, and dedication to the cause of protecting and taking care of health of troops and citizens. In the education and training process, it has drawn several lessons as follows.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh during his visit to the MMA on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Vietnamese Doctors’ Day

First of all, enhancing all-level party committees and commands’ leadership and direction over education and training work. The MMA’s Party Committee and Board of Directors have required party committees and commands of offices, faculties, and units to grasp resolutions, directives, plans, and projects on education and training, particularly the CMC’s Resolution 1657-NQ/QUTW, dated 20 December 2022, and Resolution 628-NQ/ĐU, dated 31 March 2023, by the MMA Party Committee on renewing and improving education and training work to meet the requirements of VPA building in the new situations. Based on those documents, party committees and commands at all levels have made highly feasible action programs/plans for reforming all steps of training under the motto of “substantive teaching, learning, and evaluation” in accordance with their functions and assigned tasks. Besides, they have stepped up propagation and task introduction work to raise awareness and a sense of responsibility among all target individuals, particularly teachers and learners, and encourage synergy in the implementation process.

Additionally, the MMA has regularly enhanced the study and following of Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle in tandem with the Campaign on promoting tradition, devoting talent, deserving to be “Uncle Ho’s Soldiers” in the new era and the Determined to Win Emulation Movement. It has closely inspected and supervised its affiliates’ task performance, rectifying drawbacks opportunely, aligning the building of typically strong, pure party committees and party organisations with the building of “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong offices, faculties, and units. Thanks to the MMA Party Committee’s leadership, party organisations across the MMA have recently successfully organised their congresses as the basis for holding the MMA’s 23^rd Party Congress and creating a new impetus for all cadres, lecturers, and cadets to unceasingly promote unity, a sense of responsibility, and resolve, excellently fulfil their central political tasks, and further improve the quality of education and training.

Lecturers and educational managers play a decisive role in the quality of education and training. Therefore, the MMA has concentrated on building and developing a pool of lecturers and educational managers on a par with their task requirements. Under the Project on “building a contingent of teachers and educational managers within the VPA in the period of 2023 - 2030 and beyond”, it has adhered to procedures for personnel recruitment, training, and use, regularly sufficiently staffing its affiliates according to their new organisational structure, with priority given to cadet management units. It has established a set of criteria to select lecturers and educational managers with great “virtues, vision, and knowledge” and ensure synchronicity in terms of structure, age range, and speciality. Great value has been attached to developing a corps of qualified lecturers with high degrees and scientific titles, particularly in the new, key fields. To that end, the MMA has diversified forms of training to comprehensively develop its staff members’ competence. Over the years, a part from on-the-spot human training and development, the MMA has selected and sent its cadres to specialised educational facilities both at home and abroad, deploying its staff members to hold positions at units across the VPA, requiring its lecturers to undertake teaching, scientific research, and medical treatment tasks simultaneously. Notably, it has promoted cooperation with highly prestigious training facilities and hospitals both at home and abroad in exchange programs on teaching and scientific research as an important channel for developing its contingent of cadres and lecturers. Moreover, it has seriously maintained competence assessment exams, all-level good lecturer contests, and approval of teaching titles, creating both motivations and pressures for its cadres and lecturers to put more efforts in self-study, self-improvement, and education, training, scientific research tasks. Thanks to those synchronised approaches, up to now, all lecturers and educational managers of the MMA have held bachelor’s degree or higher; within the MMA, there are now 225 doctors, 67 associate professors, and 4 professors. Those human resources have been acting as the core force in renewing and improving the MMA’s education and training work.

Military Hospital 103 takes part in earthquake recovery efforts in Myanmar

In addition to developing human resources, the MMA has also renewed content, programs, and methods of teaching, learning, and evaluation appropriate to the development of medicine and medical science and technology as well as the increasingly high requirements set by the work of protecting and taking care of health of troops and citizens. Adhering to the Project on “renewing training procedures and programs for all-level cadres across the VPA to meet the task requirements in the new situation” and the motto: “schools’ training quality is the combat readiness capacity of units”, the MMA has focused on reviewing, adjusting, supplementing, and “integrating” its training programs, “increasing practice and self-study”, maintaining a balance between bodies of knowledge in semesters, academic years, and the entire course. At the same time, it has conducted surveys on curricula of medical training facilities both at home and abroad to establish its own training outcomes for groups of cadets in alignment with postgraduate admission standards as well as national and regional quality accreditation criteria. Up to now, it has eliminated all overlapping content and imbalances between bodies of knowledge, maintaining specialised, practical, modern, updated knowledge, ensuring a balance between theory and practice as well as between knowledge and skills of Clinical Medicine and Military Medicine.

A part from a reform in its training programs, the MMA has concentrated on renewing methods of teaching and learning, and especially adopting active, modern, learners-centred medical practice to encourage cadets’ proactivity and creativity. While providing guidance and orientation for cadets’ self-study, the MMA has applied information technology, simulation software, and high technologies to online teaching and learning, problems-based teaching and learning, group teaching and learning, and cases-based teaching and learning. Besides, it has actively invited top experts from highly prestigious medical facilities both at home and abroad to deliver lectures and share their hands-on experiences for its cadets. Its leadership have also taken part in teaching, exam marking, and graduation thesis evaluation to create significant changes in renewing methods of teaching and learning. It has attached importance to renewing its cadets’ learning methods, encouraging self-study among its cadets, transforming the training process into a self-training process. Simultaneously, it has renewed forms and methods of exam, testing, and evaluation towards the “three substantive things”, heightening its cadets’ practical skills, thinking ability, and capability in applying theory to practice; information technology has been employed to ensure accuracy and objectivity in the assessment process.

Due to the particularities of its training work, the MMA has growing needs for training facilities and equipment. Therefore, in addition to managing and effectively exploiting the existing facilities and equipment, the MMA has mobilised resources and stepped up investment to upgrade its facilities and equipment for education, training, and scientific research in a modern, synchronised way. Priority has been given to constructing a centre for medical simulation and skills, smart classrooms (Flipped Classrooms), digital and smart libraries, and common database systems. Currently, it is executing the Project to build Military Hospital 103 and Le Huu Trac National Burn Hospital into exemplary medical facilities, developing the system of E-Learning lectures, and employing online teaching - learning platform Moodle. Moreover, it has cooperated with Command 86 in establishing public Wi-Fi networks to meet its cadets’ needs at any time and anywhere. A part from modernisation of its facilities, it has focused on researching and designing textbooks and materials for each subject and speciality, stepping up standardisation and modernisation of its curricula, ensuring uniformity between curricula and materials for combat training and exercises, digitalising its materials in the common database systems, gradually producing E-Learning lectures and videos to give instructions on clinical examination, and actively applying information technology in management, archive, and exploitation process. In 2024, it finished designing lectures for phase 1 of the battalion-level officer training program, promulgating “Guidelines on deploying infantry regiment’s medical stations” for graduation exercises, officially approving 9 textbooks, accepting 24 textbooks at grass-roots level, digitalising thousands of materials in the common database systems.

Those above-mentioned results have provided important prerequisites for developing a smart MMA capable of successfully conducting the digital transformation revolution, applying artificial intelligence, deserving to be one of the leading medical training facilities on both domestic and international scales, providing high-calibre human resources for the building of a modern VPA, and meeting its task requirements in the new situation.

Lt. Gen., Prof., Dr TRAN VIET TIEN

Director of the MMA