October 5th is World Teachers’ Day – an annual event dedicated both to celebrating the work of teachers and educators around the globe and to assessing issues pertaining to education. As the World Teachers’ Day event website states, “teachers are a normative indicator of social health.”
HVO is fortunate to support the efforts of many talented and passionate health care educators. These individuals work tirelessly to ensure not just social health, but physical health for populations in resource-scarce countries. HVO endeavors to honor these individuals year-round, through initiatives such as our Golden Apple Award, which celebrates the work of health care professionals who have gone above and beyond in support of the HVO mission to transform lives through education. One such professional is Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Chung, the long-time on-site coordinator for HVO’s anesthesia training project in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Dr. Chung exemplifies the notion that the best teachers are also lifelong learners. As 2014 SEA-HVO Fellow Cindy Hwang, MD, observed:
“As head of the department, Dr. Chung often takes the lead in learning new skills first, frequently through self-teaching, before passing along his knowledge to his colleagues.”
Of course, great teachers are most likely to thrive when paired with eager and receptive students, an experience many of our volunteers have commented on after returning home from their overseas assignments.
“These students were not only attentive and polite, but they were eager to learn and use this information to help their patients. It gave me great pride to see them in action,” one volunteer wrote of her experience teaching at HVO’s anesthesia training project in Bhutan.
As an organization, it brings HVO great pride when these students go on to become heath care educators themselves, as was the case for Dr. Isaac Kajja. In 1998, Dr. Kajja participated in HVO’s postgraduate training at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. The health educators that Dr. Kajja encountered in that program significantly influenced his career trajectory.
“Their critical thinking and inquisitive approach during their facilitated seminars and workshops prompted/inspired me to pursue PhD studies from which I graduated in 2010,” he recalls.
Today Dr. Kajja is Chair of the Department of Orthopaedics at Mulago Hospital, the teaching hospital associated with Makerere University. In this role he is able to carry on the tradition of excellence in health care education established by HVO volunteers and local health workers throughout our 30-year history.
Without the support of educators such as Drs. Chung and Kajja, HVO would be unable to fulfill its mission of transforming lives through education. In honor of World Teachers’ Day, we invite you to take a moment to reflect on all of the extraordinary teachers who have had an impact on your life, career, or maybe even your health. And if you are a teacher, thank you!