Improving the quality of training doctors and law graduates: How to tighten properly?

Many opinions say that the goal of this policy is to improve training quality and standardize output, but it also raises many questions about the flexibility of the university education system in the context of the world moving towards an interdisciplinary and open model.

Many opinions support the need to tighten the quality of training for the medical profession because the issue of protecting human health is paramount. The practice of doctors is directly related to the health, life and quality of life of the people. If the training of this profession is not focused, the risks of medical errors will seriously affect society, not only for current patients but also potentially affect future generations.

According to Prof. Dr. Tran Diep Tuan, Chairman of the Council of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, the policy of rectifying medical training activities is appropriate when the medical profession is currently being trained in many schools, including schools that do not meet the standard conditions for teaching staff and practice facilities. This will affect the quality of medical training in general.

In the long term, in addition to tightening the opening of medical training, schools that are training doctors, if allowed to train, need to be strictly inspected to continue recruiting. Currently, the inspection standards are applied to all industries, but the medical field needs its own standards with the participation of medical staff.

Lawyer, Dr. Dang Van Cuong, Thuy Loi University also agreed with the policy of improving the quality of university education, especially the three important areas of training doctors, teachers and bachelors of law, which always have a direct impact on social life, related to the rights, health and knowledge of the people, so they need to be closely managed and monitored. However, according to Dr. Dang Van Cuong, improving the quality of human resources does not mean reducing the scale of training or "only allowing specialized schools to train bachelors of law".

In reality, quality is determined by the teaching staff, facilities, training programs, output standards and evaluation-monitoring system, not by the name "law school" or "law faculty".

The view that only law schools should train bachelors of law is contrary to the trend of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary education in the world and is not suitable for the reality of Vietnam, where the demand for studying law and working in the legal field is very high and this can cause a crisis in human resources in the legal industry. Therefore, it is only necessary to regulate the training of lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and investigators at specialized institutions, while training bachelors of law, the basic level should continue to be maintained in many schools to meet social needs.

Sharing more with CAND Newspaper reporters from the perspective of an independent expert, Associate Professor Dr. Do Van Dung, former Principal of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education, said that the policy of limiting medical training to medical schools and law training to law schools is currently causing much controversy. In terms of advantages, both medicine and law require high professional standards, special facilities and a team of highly specialized lecturers.

Focusing on training in specialized schools helps ensure output quality, avoiding the situation of "massive opening of majors" for the purpose of enrollment. In addition, this policy also contributes to protecting learners and society when graduates from unqualified institutions often encounter difficulties in practicing, affecting the reputation of the industry and the rights of the people, especially in the medical field; increasing professionalism when it can help standardize programs, unify national standards and easily assess quality.

However, according to Associate Professor Dr. Do Van Dung, the limitation and risk of this policy is that it goes against the trend of interdisciplinary because in the world, the fields of medicine, law, technology, and economics are increasingly tending to intersect. For example, technology law, robot lawyers, data medicine, robot doctors, etc. all require interdisciplinary training, so training monopoly will reduce creativity and knowledge integration. At the same time, it reduces learning opportunities for learners and healthy competition between training institutions when many multidisciplinary universities have good research capacity and adequate facilities but can be eliminated from the training process just because they are not "specialized schools".

In addition, this policy also shows rigidity in education management: Instead of tightening training rights, we should focus on quality control, output standards and flexible licensing mechanisms based on the actual capacity of each school.

“In the current context, organizing national professional exams for specific fields such as medicine, law, and pedagogy is an inevitable trend and should be implemented. In the US and Australia, students after graduating from medicine or law must pass professional exams (USMLE, Bar Exam, AMC, etc.) to be licensed. This helps separate academic training and practical professional competency assessment. If the national professional exam is organized with an independent monitoring system and transparent exam process, it will bring many benefits such as: Standardizing output capacity nationwide; motivating schools to improve training quality; ensuring practitioners meet ethical and professional standards,” Associate Professor, Dr. Do Van Dung proposed.

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Duc, University of Technology, Hanoi National University also emphasized that strictness and rigor in training in medicine and law are extremely necessary because these are two very specific fields, requiring staff not only to have qualifications but also experience and practice certificates. In the context of medical and law training facilities developing too quickly in recent times while the training quality in many places has not met the requirements, tightening management, even merging, dissolving, and re-planning to improve quality is necessary. However, the regulation that "only medical schools can train doctors, only law schools can train law" needs to be understood thoroughly and comprehensively and the prerequisite is quality, not the name.

In reality, comprehensive and multidisciplinary schools still train doctors and lawyers very effectively if they fully meet the requirements: Standard practice facilities, quality teaching staff; independently accredited programs. Therefore, overly "rigid" regulations on one type of school can limit training resources, while the ultimate goal is to ensure quality.

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