Professionalism has become one of the core competencies in medical education which will shape physicians’s behavior in the future to provide high-quality and patient-centered care services. Objectives: To assess the perceptions and attitudes of medical students regarding professionalism in health care. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out with 717 second-year and fifth-year medical students of Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University. Results: Students’ perception on professionalism was not high, at 3.85 out of 5 points. In which, “respect” was the domain having highest score and “communication skills” was the lowest recognition domain (4.15 and 3.54 out of 5, respectively). Preclinical students had higher perception than students having clinical experiences in all aspects of professionalism (p<0.05). Conclusion: Priority should be given to train professionalism and communication skills through the early clinical exposure program and hidden curriculum across all years of medical education program. Furthermore, the core aspects of professionalism are needed to be consistently identified and evaluated in the training program among medical universities in Vietnam

Background: Blended learning offers opportunities for the complexity of learning in clinical education. Student peer assessment is widely used as a form of formative assessment in early clinical exposure programs, especially clinical communication skills training. This study aimed to describe clinical communication skills competencies of second-year students and to identify the relationships between peer and faculty assessment of communication skills in a blended learning program format. Methods: A total of 474 second-year general medical students and dental students participated in the study. Peer and lecturer assessment forms with a 5-point Likert scale according to the Calgary-Cambridge guide format were used to evaluate students’ performance of basic communication skills, relationship building, and history taking. Pearson’s correlation coefficients and paired t-test were applied. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Most of students were rated at distinction level (score at 7-8.4) in communication skills. Mean of the overall score by peer and faculty assessment were 7.46 ± 1.03 and 7.17 ± 0.68, respectively. Peers rarely provided negative ratings on subcategories of communication skills. Skills of understanding the patient’s perspectives and gathering information were the most reported skills needed to improve among students. Significant positive correlations were found between peer and faculty evaluations for building relationship, establishing initial rapport, and gathering information domains (p < 0.01). Students tended to grade their colleagues higher for building relationship (3.88 ± 0.62) and establishing initial rapport domains (3.72 ± 0.61) than other domains, meanwhile, teachers tended to grade building relationship (3.80 ± 0.55) and gathering information domains (3.64 ± 0.38) higher than other domains. Conclusion: The findings suggest that student peer evaluation can be valuable for clinical education. As part of a formative assessment, it can be also used for faculty to evaluate students’ clinical communication skills performance in innovative medical education programs. Key words: peer assessment, clinical communication skills, practice of medicine, early clinical practice, blended learning.

Introduction: Undernutrition is popular among inpatients. According to estimates of National institute of Nutrition, the prevalence of undernutrition accounts for 40% to 50% among inpatients. Undernutrition has a significant effect on complication, mortality, hospital stay as well as quality of life... Therefore, screening and evaluating the nutritional status is important in the treatment process. Objectives: 1. To assess nutritional status of elderly inpatients at two departments of Internal medicine, Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital. 2. To find out dietary habits and its relation to nutritional status. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 389 inpatients in two departments of Internal medicine. Body Mass Index (BMI) and Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) were applied to assess nutritional status, and questionnaire was used to understand dietary habits and its relation to nutritional status. Results: The prevalence of undernutrition among elderly inpatients by BMI and SGA were 38.8% and 35.0 % respectively. The was a relationship between the habit of using food after cooking for more than 2 hours, the selection of food suitable for diseases and the nutritional status assessing by BMI. There was a relationship between the eating at a fixed time, using food within 30 minutes after cooking, eating after 9:00 PM, drinking over 1.5 liters of water per day and the nutritional status assessing by SGA. Conclusion: The prevalence of undernutrition among elderly inpatients at two departments of Internal medicine was quite high. Therefore, it is important to consider assessing nutritional status as a routine procedure and design nutritional intervention plan with undernutrition inpatients. Key words: nutritional status, dietary habits