Associate professor Ngô Viết Quỳnh Trâm is the head of the Microbiology Faculty, Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy (Hue UMP).  Hue UMP is one of ten medical universities in Vietnam promoting medical education reform through USAID’s Improving Access, Curriculum and Teaching in Medical Education and Emerging Diseases (IMPACT-MED) Alliance. In the spring of 2020, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Health distributed guidance on prevention and response on COVID-19 to medical and health professors, including Dr. Trâm.  She was then tasked with conveying that guidance on to her students. Concerned over how to best deliver such an extensive amount of content both quickly and efficiently, she turned to her experience over the past three years with IMPACT-MED.  Utilizing skills gained from the IMPACT-MED program, she and other colleagues developed learning objectives, proactive assessments and teaching methods to deliver 20 theoretical and practical training courses for 450 final-year medical students from May to June 2020. These comprehensive training courses covered preventive medicine, treatment, and applications in public health, and elicited enthusiastic student feedback.  Additional medical residents and post-graduate students also enrolled in the subsequent optional courses offered in July. 

In less than two months after attending these COVID-19 prevention and response training courses, students have become front-line volunteering medical officers to prevent and respond to the pandemic. More than 370 students and nearly 20 young lecturers of Hue UMP volunteered to participate in COVID-19 tracking and prevention activities in Danang, in response to the second COVID-19 wave in Vietnam. 

Medical students attend associate professor Ngô Viết Quỳnh's lecture.

USAID IMPACT-MED

Dr. Trâm shared, “I am very happy and proud because I have applied the knowledge of the medical education reform supported by USAID to assist my teaching plan, lecture design, and the delivery of knowledge of COVID-19 precautions to my students over the past few months, and thanks to those skills, we have been able to effectively share a significant amount of knowledge to my students in such a short period of time.”