APSR Short-Term Research/Training Scholarship

My APSR Short-Term Research/Training Fellowship started on 1 July 2011 and ended on 30 September 2011. During three months of the fellowship at the Division of Respiratory Medicine, SUMS, I completed most of my fellowship's objectives as follows:

• Firstly, I attended the morning meeting on weekdays at the Internal Respiratory Ward of the SUMS Hospital. With help from senior Japanese doctors of that Ward, I learned many clinical cases with different respiratory diseases, some of which I had not encountered in Vietnam.
• Secondly, I attended the weekly journal club which lasted for two hours each session and was chaired by my host supervisor, Dr Yasutaka Nakano. At each session young doctors, including me, presented and commented on an original article which had recently been published in an international medical journal. We also had chance to present our research data to get useful suggestions from other experienced doctors.
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  Dr Nguyen Van Tho (centre) with Dr Nakano's team
  Thirdly, I used dedicated software at SUMS to analyze chest CT images of 70 Vietnamese patients with COPD which were sent from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City. I also performed statistical analysis from the data of these subjects and wrote an abstract for the conference of Japanese Society of Thoracic Functional Imaging which will be held in Shiga next February.
• Finally, apart from doing scientific research, I also learned how hard and carefully the Japanese doctors do their daily work, observed modern facilities in the hospital and experienced the kindness of Japanese people.

I found this fellowship very fruitful for my future career. I will continue to cooperate with the Division of Respiratory Medicine of SUMS to complete our research on Vietnamese patients with COPD.

Before I finish this report, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Michiaki Mishima, Chairperson of the APSR Research Committee; Ms. Suga Konno, APSR secretariat; Dr Yasutaka Nakano, my host supervisor; Dr Le Thi Tuyet Lan, my home supervisor; Dr Emiko Ogawa, Health Administration Centre of SUMS; Ms. Yukie Uratani, the former secretary of the Division of Respiratory Medicine; and staff at the Division of Respiratory Medicine of SUMS for helping me to complete this wonderful fellowship.