International collaboration to improve physiotherapists’ training, Viet Nam

Problem: Like most lower- and middle-income countries, Vietnam faces scarcity of its rehabilitation workforce and lack of training programs reaching international standards. Approach: To address this issue, four Vietnamese Universities, the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Humanity & Inclusion (HI) and World Physiotherapy (WP) agreed in 2018 to collaborate to strengthen pre-job education for physiotherapists. Local setting: This on-going collaboration in Vietnam has enabled the development of: a national PT Association, a 4-year, competency-based entry-level curriculum for physiotherapists (bachelor), continuing professional development opportunities and a 2-year master program targeting PT lecturers and clinical supervisors as well as support to 4 students to acquire a PhD degree.Relevant changes: Strong collaboration and comprehensive and complementary interventions established have laid the foundation for sustainable impact on the quality of education programs for physiotherapists, which will provide an overall improvement in access to and the standard of rehabilitation services and patient outcomes.Lessons learned: Three key elements underpinned successful outcomes: facilitation to drive ownership by Vietnamese educators of their entry-level curriculum to ensure it is both context-adapted and in-line with international standards; a model to strengthen the rehabilitation workforce that addresses curriculum quality as well as skills and knowledge of educators involved in teaching and supervising the programs; and support to the establishment of a national professional association able to provide continuing education for physiotherapists and collaborate internationally.
SCOPUS: ar.j
info:eu-repo/semantics/published