Heng Nhoung writes about his most recent experience in Cambodia

July 20, 2017

The 2017 Roxanna Todd Hodges Stroke Foundation Summer Student Scholar, Heng Nhoung writes about his most recent experience in Cambodia. Heng and a team of neurologists from Keck USC worked on training medical students and further developing a formal neurology training program for Cambodians. Read about his experience below:

Heng Nhoung writes about his most recent experience in Cambodia

This summer, I had the amazing opportunity of traveling to Cambodia with neurologists from the University of Southern California to help train and further develop a neurology training program in the Kingdom of Cambodia. Currently there are no formal training programs in neurology specifically for Cambodians.

Cambodia is a Southeast Asian country of 15 million people with a per capita annual income of $1,080. In 1970, a civil war led to the rise of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge communist agenda, a agrarian society with no economy. Under Pol Pot (1975–1979), the educated class was targeted and executed, including one of my uncles who was a surgeon. Around 2 million Cambodians, a quarter of the population at the time, perished due to execution, starvation, or illness. Only a handful of doctors remained, as many died or left the country.

While in Cambodia, I coordinated with the University of Health Sciences, the medical school in Phnom Penh, to facilitate 60 hours’ worth of neurology instruction, aimed at educating current neurosurgical, internal medicine, and pediatric residents on the topics of neurology and stroke management. With my knowledge of Khmer, the Cambodian language, I made sure there was understanding between the instructors and the students. We conducted pre and post examinations to assess the impact of our education and we are proud to say that we had a positive impact on their confidence and training.

We also had a course taught by Dr. Gene Sung, a neurocritical care specialist teach neurosurgical residents in managing patients with neurological emergencies, including stroke. This is critical as Cambodia becomes more advanced with more patients aging, stroke incidence will increase without education on prevention.

Thanks to the Roxanna Todd Hodges Foundation Student Summer Scholarship, these students will carry the message of Roxanna Todd Hodges, “Strike out Stroke Wherever You Can.”

From Cambodia with Love,

Heng Nhoung