Australian Volunteer for International Development (AVID), Sarah Day, has recently completed a short tour of the speech therapy clinics in Central Vietnam, including the seaside city of Da Nang and the imperial city of Hue. Graduates from the 2012, 2014 and 2017 graduating TFA speech therapy classes, opened their clinics to Sarah to meet with them for mentoring sessions.

Sarah presented a 2-day workshop on “Becoming an Effective Clinical Educator” at the Da Nang University of Medicine Technology and Pharmacy to prepare the speech therapists to step into the roles of clinical supervisors, workshops presenters and course lecturers into the future. Speech therapists attending the course stated that they wanted to feel more confident in their supervision roles and know how to guide students to become self-aware and develop as independent problem-solvers.

Sarah also visited three speech therapy clinics and met with six individual speech therapists to discuss their learning and development goals and needs for the future. Sarah feels well assured that Central Vietnam speech therapy has a bright future thanks to the excellent and tireless work of Ms Truong Thuy Thi Hang (Na) and Ms Hoang Thi Van Anh (Office of Genetic Counselling and Disabled Children), Dr Cao Bich Thuy and Dr Ho Thi Thu Hien (Da Nang University of Medicine Technology and Pharmacy – Rehabilitation Department), Ms Doan Lan Oanh (private practice Tam Ky, Quang Nam Province) and Dr Huynh Van Ty (Da Nang Hospital for Women and Children).