The Teaching Hospitals
The teaching hospitals
Our first hospital rotation was at Hong Bang Hospital, exclusively dedicated to the treatment of tuberculosis that was rampant still in our war torn society. The hospital was close to our medical school and I don’t know why they sent us there right on our third year (in a 6 year curriculum). There, hundred of people were having miliary tuberculosis, terminal hemoptysis (vomiting blood coming from the cavities in the lungs) and drug resistant disease. Many were in their adolescence, as there was a vulnerable period of increased vulnerability in that age group that coincided furthermore with a lot of stress from harsh school exams and not infrequently malnutrition among this student population. The professor in charge was a French old timer, Dr. Gauthier, who was famous not only for his dedication, his knowledge of this particular tropical disease but also his Gallic bluntness toward the students.
We had rotations of internal medicine at Cho Ray Hospital in Cho lon. Students followed the interns, who followed the professors during ward rounds. As a regular, unremarkable student, I was most of the time nearer the hallway than the patient under discussion. My first patient was a young woman with a fever and a faint skin rash, which prompted me to quickly made the presumptive diagnosis of typhoid fever. Medical records were skimpy and any laboratory confirmation was lacking. Most significantly, I still remember the case of a girl who developed blindness after a febrile onset. She was from the center of the country, like me. After the massive communist attack in the spring of 1968, she had to leave her native village and came to Saigon for more safety. Here, in that overcrowded and faceless city, her family joined the multitude of homeless people living out of mendicity, prostitution and petty crimes. She died, of meningitis probably.
At the Hospital for Children (Binh Vien Nhi Dong), we had Dr. Phan ńěnh Tuân as Chairman. He was a quiet, diminutive man from Hue, my native city. I remember him a very dignified professor, with the demeanor of a Vietnamese mandarin. The two female professors were from opposite worlds. Dr. T MH was from North Vietnam, thin and austere. Dr. T.T.B. was from the South, a graduate from an American medical school and very eager to implement the American way of practicing medicine in our old hospital.
A patient that I still remember vividly from that hospital was a child who was dying of meningitis, with his or her parents crying and screaming at the sides of the crib. I also remember vaguely a baby that I tried in vain to resuscitate by CPR, probably my first case.
Běnh Dân Hospital (‘’Hospital for the Common People’’) on Phan Thanh Giän Street was our main location for surgical rotation. Dr Pham Bieu Tam was chairman of general surgery. He belonged to the old guard who had received their medical school education at the old University of Hanoi then their post graduate training in France, cumulating in the degree of Professeur Agregé or for only a very few Professeur titulaire (tenured professorship) rarely granted to candidates from the colonies of France like Vietnam. Among this exclusive club were Professor Tran Ngoc Ninh in orthopedic surgery (also professor and chairman of pediatric surgery, and for a while member of the cabinet under Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky), Professor Dao Duc Hoanh in Oncology, Professor Ngô Gia Hy in urology, Prof. Nguyen Van Ut in dermatology, Prof.
Nguyen Dinh Cat in ophthalmology. They were prominent people among South Vietnamese intelligentsia and enjoyed, even among the general population, a certain celebrity status.
. In contrast to other hospitals like Nguyen Van Hoc and Cho Ray, Běnh Dân remained a bastion of the old guard and received very little influence from the ‘’young Turks’’ freshly minted from American residency training system and eager to implement the American way of running things.
We had our OB/GYN rotation at Tu Du Maternity, named after the mother of King Tu Duc (19th century) who was widely admired as a wise and dedicated mother, venerated by his imperial son. It was a very large public hospital for women, under the direction of Professor Hong, a middle age man from the South. For our third year in medical school, we had to have at least 20 deliveries done, from the moment the women were accepted at admission, thru delivery, until they are carried with their babies to the wards. The student had to make sure that the woman under his charge didn’t lose her wooden shoes (guoc) and that her plastic bag of belongings followed her when he himself pushed her gurney (brancard) on the way to the delivery room.
He had to stand the bites that a suffering woman in labor inflicted on his arms or his hands. If he made a mistake or result was unsatisfactory, the following morning, he had to go to the Chairman’s office and answer to him. It was also at Tu Du Hospital that I had the most memorable months of my student life. I spent almost a year there as interne fonctionel, where I was kept busy day and night, delivering babies when a difficulty arose and doing surgery. Among the people with whom I worked most closely were Dr. Phuong , who later became a political, controversial celebrity under the new regime; Dr. Khen that I haven’t seen again since and Dr. Nguyen Bich Tuyet who was very kind to me and helped me complete expeditiously my required thesis for a timely graduation by the end of 1972, right after I had to leave my civil life to go fight the war.
Fortunately, I also had the opportunity to study from a few excellent American teachers. Medical schools at American institutions like Georgetown and University of Texas were trying to get a foothold at our school (some would look at it suspiciously and call it cultural imperialism or even worse, intelligence in disguise). I was among the few students who were just bored and abandoned by our antiquated system and looked forward to something new an challenging. Dr Smith T in internal medicine, Drs Wasserwald and Benigno in OB, Dr. Lamblet in radiology and a couple of ophthalmologists (Dr McDermott and others) spent a lot of their time tutoring our small study group of students on how to understand signs and symptoms and how to solve clinical problems rationally.
The ophthalmologists even took other student volunteers and me along with them to a hospital in Vinh Long, a city in the Mekong Delta. There we had marathon-like week where we did more than ten eye surgical procedures a day, mostly cataract removal for people who had not seen light for years .One of the patients kowtowed before the surgeon to show her gratitude when the dressing on his operated eye was removed. It was one of those few moments when I witnessed the miracle of medicine. I also had the chance to help with two cases of corneal transplant. I went with the ophthalmologist to the morgue to remove the cornea from both eyes of a dead man, probably a homeless person. The next day, we transplanted one cornea to a healthy female adolescent and the other one was given to a sickly, tuberculous young woman, probably in her early thirties. Ironically, the graft did well on the rather weak woman, and failed on the other patient. The surgeons and I spent our week in the same military living quarters; we drank milk, ate plenty of beacon and other staples of American food in the military cafeteria. We also went together to Vietnamese restaurants. It was wartime then, we rode a military Jeep and had to bring along M 16 rifles in case of terrorist attack.
Those American teachers were especially helpful to my quest for learning in very difficult times. There was less of a generation gap due to their rather young age, their open-mindedness to challenging questions and their willingness to help.

Here you'll create or edit a custom page for your Web site.
Use this template for any additional information you need such as products, pictures, fan clubs, links or just more information It's important to regularly change the content on your site and make updates to the information that you display. Doing this will help you to get more return visitors.

Add your link here

Here you'll create or edit a custom page for your Web site.
Use this template for any additional information you need such as products, pictures, fan clubs, links or just more information It's important to change the content on your site and make updates to the information that you display. Doing this will help you to get more return visitors.

Add your link here