During his lifetime, President Ho Chi Minh once advised: “In teaching and learning process, we must priortize both talent and virtue. Virtue can be understood as revolutionary ethics.

That’s the root, thus very important. Without revolutionary ethics, talent is useless.” Recognizing the importance of lecturers and education management cadres in innovating and improving the quality of education and training, in recent years, the Party Committee and Board of Directors of the Vietnam Military Medical University (VMMU) have always paid attention to building and developing a corps of lectures and education management cadres in the direction of standardization, ensuring sufficient quantity, reasonable structure, improving quality, especially focusing on improving political skills, moral qualities, lifestyle, professional conscience and professional qualifications, meeting the increasing requirements of education.

Leader of the VMMU meeting new cadets.

The University has issued a plan for training and fostering lecturers and education management cadres for the period 2019-2030; Implementing the Project to build a team of lectures and education management cadres at VMMU for the period 2023-2030 and the following years, with the goal of building a corps of lecturers and education management cadres of the University to ensure quality, reasonable structure, meeting the requirements of fundamental and comprehensive innovation in education and training of high-quality human resources and the development of science and technology in the University, associated with requirements for innovation and creativity as well as requirements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Along with that, the University has built and perfected standards and processes for training and assessing lecturers, improving the quality of the annual excellent lecturer contest. It requires lecturers to have good professional qualifications, pedagogical qualifications and capabilities, foreign languages, information technology, and practical experience. Currently, VMMU’s teaching staff has nearly 500 comrades, of which over 92% have postgraduate degrees (including 5 professors, 75 associate professors, 231 doctors); More than 200 young officials and lecturers have foreign language proficiency of B2 or IELTS of 5.0 or higher. The annual assessment shows that the corps of lecturers and education management cadres in the University basically meets the prescribed standards, having strong political will, moral qualities, and a clean lifestyle, possessing a sense of good discipline, dedication to the profession, awareness of preserving the honor of teachers, compassion, qualifications, comprehensive capacity, teaching style and methods, scientific work, professional, meeting the University’s innovation requirements of education and training.

However, VMMU’s corps of lecturers and education management cadres still have some shortcomings and limitations, such as: Inadequate number and structure between majors; Some majors still lack lecturers and have limited resources; A small number of lecturers lack enthusiasm, even violate professional ethics, teaching methods are slow to innovate, and many lecturers’ ability to use foreign languages and information technology in management and teaching is limited. The management capacity of a part of education management cadres is still weak, not meeting the requirements in the new era…

To contribute to improving the quality and revolutionary ethics of the corps of lecturers and education management cadres in the current period, VMMU determined that, first of all, it is necessary to complete the criteria for the quality and capacity of the corps of lecturers and education management cadres. The University gradually builds a competency framework and criteria for evaluating lecturer capacity based on reference to guidelines for assessing the quality of university training programs of the Quality Assurance Network of regional and international universities, ensuring a quality, modern, and up-to-date approach to the development trends of higher education in the world. Along with that, the University continues to synchronously deploy measures to improve the quality of training and fostering lecturers and education management cadres. Training and fostering content must be comprehensive, including political ideology, ethics, professional knowledge and life skills, and modern pedagogical skills.

The University plans, arranges, and uses the corps of lectures and education management cadres objectively and accurately. In particular, focusing on doing well the planning and using of staff; selecting staff for attending training courses in countries with developed medical systems. Developing standards and processes for training, selecting and assessing lecturers appropriate to each stage, combining standardization of lecturers’ activities. At the same time, continuing to pay attention and take care of life and ensure good policies for lecturers and education management cadres, having remuneration policies commensurate with specific jobs.

In addition, the University continues to promote building a truly clean and healthy cultural environment, creating a solid foundation to prevent and combat negative impacts from the negative side of the market economy; promptly praise and reward examples of pure and exemplary medical ethics, and at the same time resolutely handle violations; Regularly and effectively maintain studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and style, as well as following the Campaign “Promoting traditions, dedicating talents, worthy of the title of Uncle Ho’s Soldiers” and the Movement “Military medical soldiers follow Uncle Ho’s teachings”… Encourage and motivate lecturers and education management cadres to actively self-study, practice and hone both their expertise and professional ethics, ready to accept and complete assigned tasks, contributing to building VMMU to become increasingly strong and developed.

Major General, Assoc. Prof. Dr. TRAN NGOC TUAN, Deputy Director of Vietnam Military Medical University

Translator: Nguyen Minh Khoa