In the afternoon of 7^th July 2021, FV Hospital organised an online CME training programme “Early Recovery After Surgery (ERAS)” through the application – Microsoft TEAM. In this programme, FV invited Professor Hideki Taniguchi from Saiseikai Yokohamashi TOBU Hospital – Japan, Dr Nguyen Viet Quynh Thu – Head of FV Dietetics & Nutrition Department, Dr Ngo Viet Thang – FV Department of General Surgery, Dr Nguyen Thuy Linh – Hanoi Medical University. Although the programme had to be held in an online session because of COVID-19 epidemic. This programme attracted 150 medical staff to participate from FV Hospital and from other hospitals across Vietnam, with each participant followed the recommendations from the Ministry of Health to strictly comply with 5K regulations.

In his opening speech, Dr Do Trong Khanh – FV Medical Director has talked about how ERAS (Enhanced Recovery After Surgery) is a collection of care regiments with different modalities for patients pre-surgery, during surgery and post-surgery. This is multimodal perioperative patient care was designed to maintain organ function before surgery and reducing the stress response after surgery. In ERAS, besides having good surgeon, it also depends on many factors such as anaesthesia, nutritional care, rehabilitation and psychotherapy. ERAS has been used to comprehensively care for patients during surgery, reduce the length of hospitalisation, reduce costs, the rate of complications and improve the quality of treatment.

At the beginning of the programme, the lecturer – Hideki Taniguchi – Professor of Saiseikai Yokohamashi TOBU Hospital presented the topic “For making patient’s DREAM after surgery- perioperative nutritional management using ERAS protocol” and shared a lot of knowledge that he has applied in his hospital in Japan. In the world, ERAS has been applied across many fields including: Colorectal Surgery, Gastric Surgery, Urological Surgery, Gynaecological Surgery, Pancreatic, Hepatobiliary Surgery; Head and Neck Surgery, Fat Reduction Surgery, that help patients recover quicker after surgery.

Next, Dr Nguyen Viet Quynh Thu – Head of FV Dietetics & Nutrition Department has presented the topic “Nutrition Care Process Guideline in Surgery in FV Hospital”. ERAS at FV Hospital is gradually being applied to the process of patient care before, during and after surgery with multi-specialty coordination among Surgery, Anaesthesia, Nutrition and Physiotherapy. The ERAS protocol at FV Hospital is standardised and optimised to reduce the side effects of the surgery on patients and reduce stress, as well as decreasing organ functions. This means, our patients can recover quicker after surgery. Key elements of ERAS include preoperative patient counselling to help build trust and encourage their participation in treatment methods and interaction with medical staff for optimised nutrition, standardised anaesthesia & non-opioid analgesia regiments and early motor rehabilitation.

Finishing the program is the topic “Experience in ERAS practice at Vinmec Hanoi Hospital” was presented by Dr Ngo Viet Thang, Department of General Surgery, FV Hospital and the clinical case studies was provided by Dr Nguyen Thuy Linh – Deputy Head of Dietetics & Nutrition Department – Hanoi Medical University.

Although the programme only lasted about three hours, it provided a lot of useful information about early post-surgical recovery; which is a very hot topic in Vietnam. We hope that with the knowledge and experience from the training session, participants will be able to apply it to our surgical patient care process and increase the quality of treatments to our patients.