For the past two months, nephrology physicians from St. Paul Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam, have been visiting Nebraska Medicine and UNMC as a part of a renal transplant center sister program.
The visit was made possible thanks to a grant from the International Society of Nephrology. Making the trip to Omaha were Dam Quang Trung, M.D., Luong Tuan Kien, M.D. and Bui Hoang, M.D. In April 2016, Vicki Hunter, nurse manager of the Kidney-Pancreas Transplant Program, and Scott Westphal, M.D., associate professor of nephrology, visited St. Paul Hospital, which had just started a kidney transplant program.
“We were so warmly welcomed in Hanoi,” Hunter said. “While in Vietnam, we were able to establish the next steps in assisting them with their mission.”
Fast forward almost a year and the relationship continues to build between the two health systems. The visiting physicians rounded with transplant nephrology, transplant surgery, general nephrology, ICU, and others while in Omaha. They also observed in the Transplant Clinic and Dialysis Unit, as well as attending a variety of nephrology and transplant-related conferences.
“Two months is a very short period of time to understand the work, culture and people here in Omaha,” Dr. Luong said. “It is easy to recognize the staff is not only highly professional and hard-working, but also very friendly with their patients. We wish we can meet again in the future.”
“Everyone here is very kind to us,” Dr. Bui said. “You taught us a lot, and smiled with us a lot. That truly makes us happy. We hope the relationship between our hospitals will get better and better over time. We also hope that we can come back here one day.”
“Yesterday, we bid farewell to our visitors from St. Paul Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam,” said Clifford Miles, M.D., medical director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program and associate professor of nephrology.
“One of our goals is to foster development of their kidney transplant program back in Hanoi, and we hope that they can use knowledge gained here to help do so. Kidney transplantation may be especially useful in developing countries as a means to treat kidney failure, since on the whole it is less costly, offers better patient outcomes, and may require less infrastructure.”