Nguyen Ngoc

Medical ethics play a fundamental role in global healthcare, ensuring that patients receive care marked by dignity, compassion and fairness. Vietnam’s 12 ethical principles, codified in 1996, integrate universal ethical standards with local sociocultural and ideological traditions, particularly emphasising emotional sacrifice, holistic care and social responsibility. While these principles promote professional excellence and community service, this essay argues that their application within Vietnam’s under-resourced healthcare system has unintended consequences for physician well-being. An analysis of key domains—including emotional burden from holistic care expectations, administrative and educational overload, emergency care pressures and end-of-life responsibilities—reveals how systemic shortcomings intensify professional strain. Evidence from Vietnam and international comparisons shows that without structured delegation of non-clinical duties, protected working conditions and integrated palliative care systems, physicians face escalating risks of emotional exhaustion, moral injury and career attrition. Unlike healthcare models in developed countries, where ethical standards are balanced by institutional safeguards, Vietnam’s framework demands near-unlimited commitment without corresponding systemic support. Unless ethical expectations are recalibrated and support structures are modernised, Vietnam’s medical ethics, though noble in aspiration, risk undermining the very sustainability of its healthcare workforce. This essay highlights the need for urgent reform to align Vietnam’s ethical ideals with contemporary clinical realities, ensuring that both patient-centred care and physician resilience are protected.

The phrase ‘chết phải toàn thây’, which has no direct English translation, can be roughly interpreted as ‘one must die with an intact body’. This belief, deeply rooted in Vietnamese culture, significantly influences how the body is treated after death. It is often linked to the idea that the body must remain whole for the soul to rest peacefully or transition smoothly into the afterlife. While many societies, particularly in the Western world, view the donation of organs after death as a noble act, the belief in ‘chết phải toàn thây’ poses a significant barrier to promoting organ donation in Vietnam. This essay highlights the cultural origins of this belief and explores a broader interpretation of ‘toàn thây’ or ‘intact body’ in the modern era. The phrase ‘chết phải toàn thây’, firmly ingrained in Vietnamese culture for thousands of years, reflects the influence of religious and philosophical traditions, particularly Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.1 Confucianism emphasises filial piety (xiao), which includes preserving bodily integrity after death as a sign of respect for one’s parents and ancestors.2 Taoism, with its focus on the soul’s immortality and harmony with nature, regards the body as a sacred vessel crucial for maintaining a balance between the physical and spiritual realms.2 Together, these traditions form a cultural framework that assigns profound spiritual and emotional significance to the body, making its preservation a deeply held …

Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) is gaining popularity due to its superior mechanical properties, including high strength, toughness, durability, and excellent seismic performance. However, the risk of explosive spalling in UHPC structures exposed to fire poses a significant challenge, fundamentally hindering comprehensive studies on fire safety and limiting the broader engineering applications of UHPC. In this study, the mixture proportion of UHPC was developed and optimized by comparing the usage of yellow river and standard sands, different types of chemical admixtures, and different curing regimes. Furthermore, a sensitive case study was also conducted to optimize the calcined bauxite content to improve UHPC's fire resistance. For these purposes, 189 UHPC cubes, incorporating variations in particle types, superplasticizer types, and curing regimes, were tested under three thermal levels, such as 200℃,400℃, and 600℃. The microstructural evolution of heated cube specimens was then observed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) examination. Calcined bauxite was then considered to replace the standard sand to improve the fire resistance of UHPC and enhance the residual compressive strength of cube specimens under thermal conditions. For this purpose, 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% calcined bauxite content was designed as six case studies. Furthermore, the degradation of UHPC strength was also investigated for the corresponding six case studies by conducting the uniaxial compressive experiments. Finally, the microstructural evolution under both thermal conditions and calcined bauxite content was observed and discussed.

Vietnam is a communist country. For a Marxist ideologue, “religion is the opium of the masses.” But many communist countries—over the years—have evolved from a strictly atheistic persuasion to a tolerance for religious practices. Except probably in North Korea, this transformation from an atheistic perspective to religious tolerance has become a phenomenon in communist countries like Russia and China.Vietnam did not have that experience. This paper will show that religious pluralism was tolerated, even accepted, in communist Vietnam. I will show how vibrant this religious amalgamation is in Vietnam and demonstrate, as in the case of market economics thriving in communist countries, that Vietnamese communism and religious pluralism can robustly coexist with each other.