Every year in Vietnam, there are around 12,000 medical students, but only about 900 are selected to become resident doctors, making it one of the most competitive and demanding career paths in Vietnam. Despite their talent and dedication, resident doctors receive severely limited financial support. This year, they received 1.5 million VND each in total for all three years of support. It is so frustrating that talents like resident doctors are hardly being supported at the beginning of their careers, while they are contributing to the healthcare system of the future.
The path to becoming a doctor is long and unforgiving. After six years in university, candidates have only one chance in their lifetimes to pass the residency exam. Those who fail the exam often have to work in low-resourced local hospitals for several years with low salaries, sometimes facing hidden costs, and unfair practices just to get a work position. Even those who succeed as resident doctors are expected to work six days a week under intense pressure. They do not have personal time, family lives or good mental health. Universities in Vietnam are becoming financially independent from the government, which leads to rising tuition fees, from 7-8 million VND to between 50-60 million VND. In the near future, there will be no equality in medical education since only kids born to rich families will be able to become doctors.
This system creates serious social consequences. Many young doctors with poor backgrounds have only two choices: giving up due to financial problems or joining private hospitals. Private hospitals provide well-qualified services, attract wealthy patients, earn more money than public ones, therefore they appeal to good doctors and nurses to work for them. As a result, medical staff tend to leave public hospitals, which then suffer from a lack of workers. With fewer staff, public hospitals provide poorer services and attract fewer rich patients while most of the poor patients use medical insurance, so they earn less money. Because of this, even more staff decide to leave, creating a continuing negative cycle that weakens the public healthcare system. Furthermore, because private hospitals focus on profit and cost control, they often avoid treating severe and complex cases such as cancer, which require a lot of time, high-level staff and expensive equipment. These difficult cases are transferred to public hospitals.
All of the above consequences create a vicious cycle. To put an end to this cycle, the government should provide incentive policies for attracting talents and spend more money for investing in facilities and the environment for the public healthcare system. At least, medical staff salaries and benefits must be enough that they do not have to worry about their basic living needs