INTRODUCTION TO PHAM NGOC THACH UNIVERSITY OF MEDICINE
The Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine (PNTU) was established on July 1st 2008 on the basis of the University Training Center (UTC) for Healthcare Professionals in HCM city.
Since the early days of its foundation in 1989, the UTC has been assigned as a university of medicine in Ho Chi Minh city. During the past twenty-year of development, the UTC, as its previous name prior to 2008 and the UPNT as its current name, has successfully completed 14 full-time regular training courses, including 1422 general practitioners who have actively taken part in the city’s healthcare system. Additionally, the University has provided more than 8000 nurses and 500 primary healthcare physicians (four-year on-the-job training course), strengthening the healthcare resources for remote and distant areas in the South of Vietnam (from Da Nang city to Southern provinces). The University's achievements are highly appreciated by the social community. As evidenced by each year, the University receives a considerable number of task requirements from the City’s and Central Government’s healthcare institutions located in the city, which are five- and four-folds higher than the actual number of graduated doctors and nurses, respectively. Furthermore, graduate courses and continuous medical education are regularly organized for thousands of medical specialists in various disciplines (medical imaging, anesthesiology, ENT…)
The PNTU is a public university in the national education system of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which is founded according to the Prime Minister’s Decision. The University is under direct administrative management of the HCM city People’s Committee and under the expertise management of the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education and Training.
The University’s missions and training objectives are stated as follows:
Missions
The PNTU is a multidisciplinary and multi-level university of health sciences which is responsible for educating and training undergraduate and graduate healthcare staff for the need of prevention, care and improvement of the people health in Ho Chi Minh city; becoming a key medical training and research center in the South and the whole country.
Training objectives
- Training general practitioners at the university level and nurses at the college level
- Improving healthcare staff’s qualifications, and gradually implementing various types of graduate training such as 1st and 2nd degree medical specialists, residents, masters and doctorates
- Researching and applying science, technology and educational science to basic research, clinical research and pedagogical research.
- Cooperating internationally on training and research; scientific exchange and technology transfer.
In response to these above-mentioned tasks, the university has been constantly growing in terms of faculty and facilities. Currently, the PNTU has 42 departments and 330 full-time lecturers, including 01 professor, 5 associate professors, 23 doctors of philosophy (PhD), 96 masters, and numerous first- and second-degree medical specialists. The University is located on 2 hectares of land in the center of District 10, and has relatively good facilities of modern lecture halls and laboratories, among them are the most advanced laboratories on biomaterials, bio-chemistry and molecular biology, and anatomy. In the near future, many large investment projects will be implemented under the auspices of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee. The University has a very good system of training hospitals which consists of 24 general and specialized hospitals and of a complete network of community dispensaries.
The University has broad international relationships: collaborations with France Republic in residents training programs (FFI or DSMA) and CME programs (FMC), with the Francophonie University Association (AUF) in French teaching programs, with the Belgian non-governmental organization for international solidarity (CUD or ARES) in science research... The University has signed comprehensive cooperation agreements with the University of Liège (Belgium), the University of Mainz (Germany), and has in close contact with many other universities around the world.
Being aware of its role in providing well-qualified healthcare resources for the City, the PNTU is striving to expand its training scale in parallel to ensure and gradually to improve its training quality. Only within two academic promotions (2008-2009 and 2009-2010), the University has increased its enrollment quota from the habitual 120 students per year to 270 and 380 students per year, respectively. The University also started graduate training programs. The first course among them was the first-degree medical specialists in otorhinolaryngology.
Albeit a young medical university, the PNTU will strive ceaselessly to become one of the leading medical universities in Vietnam, and to keep up with other universities in the South-East region, successfully fulfilling its mission in providing high-quality healthcare resources for the City and the country.