First Person: Mission to Vietnam
McGovern Medical School faculty and students joined forces in Vietnam to provide clinical training and share knowledge.
First Person is an occasional series, providing firsthand accounts of outreach programs involving our McGovern Medical School community.
I co-founded Nuoy Reconstructive International, a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit in 2020 in order to provide a comprehensive international medical engagement with clinical cases, lectures and education, and research development in Vietnam. This program was founded on a rebranding of R.I.C.E. (Reconstructive International Cooperation Exchange), which was started by Dr. Joseph Rosen, a plastic surgeon from Dartmouth who has been going to Vietnam since 2000. We are expanding this reach, focusing on building surgical capacity by enhancing experience and knowledge in complex reconstructive surgery with long-term partners and also developing more formalized education and research initiatives.
From March 3-17, we traveled to Vietnam and worked with Vietnam National Children’s Hospital (VNCH) (a 2,500-bed children’s hospital that is the national tertiary referral center), Viet Duc Hospital (the busiest trauma hospital in the country), Hong Ngoc Hospital (a large private hospital), and Bach Mai Hospital. Our group of 25 volunteers was comprised of surgeons, nurses, residents, students, and Nuoy operational/administrative personnel, including Dr. Paul Clark (chief resident, Plastic Surgery), Dr. Maria Matuszczak (chief of Pediatric Anesthesiology), Allison Seitz (MS4), and Huan Nguyen (MS4).