(Credit: PE OUCRU)

BACKGROUND 

A key part of improving quality healthcare outcomes is ensuring that those who deliver treatment are themselves emotionally and professionally trained. Clear and supportive communication between medical research staff and patients or the community is also key to ethical and effective biomedical research.  Delivering high quality research and care is only possible if healthcare workers receive the communication, emotional and practical support they need.

The OUCRU Healthcare Engagement Programme (HEP) supports medical social workers and healthcare workers in our research partner sites – both hospital and community-based care environments.  Through the programme we offer training using participatory methods to enhance communication skills, enabling HCWs to effectively assist research participants, patients and communities. We also conduct research and engagement activities to better understand and support them across a range of settings.

 (Credit: PE OUCRU)

Through this website we also seek to share learning and resources across the wider network of healthcare professionals in Vietnam, who are passionate about patient and community-centered care.

The OUCRU Public and Community Engagement department has long-term partnerships with the Hospital of Tropical Diseases (HTD) in Ho Chi Minh City and the Preventive Medical Centre (PMC) in Dak Lak province. We also work with other Vietnamese healthcare providers on a project basis.

HTD, HCMC is our host institute and primary biomedical research partner. The programme supports healthcare staff at HTD to strengthen their communication and soft skills.  The trainings also aims to enhance interpersonal relationships and reduce stress, which makes it difficult to provide compassionate and quality healthcare.  In additional, the HEP has helped develop the hospital medical social work group and offer regular training and mentoring to enable them to engage effectively with patients and their caregivers.

OUCRU has a long-standing research collaboration with the Preventive Medicine Centre in Dak Lak to study emerging zoonotic infections and immunization behaviour in rural, ethnic minority, communities.  To support this research the HEP conducts training to support community healthcare workers who are working in remote communities to enhance their communications skills and knowledge about research and the expanded programme for immunization (EPI).