The Founder and the Managing Director, Dr Myat is a medical doctor by profession and a Singapore permanent resident, holding a Bachelor degree in medicine & surgery with long-term working experiences in Singapore as a medical officer in a well-known rehab hospital (Ang Mo Kio-Thye Hua Kwan) and later moved to Ngee Ann polytechnic, as a senior lecturer, teaching diploma nursing students in School of Health Sciences for more than 10 years. He also achieved additional certificates such as Graduate Diploma in Geriatric Medicine (G.D.G.M, NUS, Singapore) and Post-graduate Diploma in Higher Education (P.G.D.H.E, NIE, Singapore). He is the current Vice-President of Myanmar Club (Singapore), which is an officially registered volunteer Myanmar organization in Singapore, after serving as the President for four years (two consecutive two-year terms).
After dedicating over a decade to the School of Health Sciences at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore, he made the decision to resign and return to his homeland to pursue his long-held dream. The driving factors behind his determination to realize this dream in his homeland are as follows…
1) To improve healthcare standard in Myanmar especially in nursing care area because nursing care had been given less priority and not enough nurses to take care of patients too. On the other hand, the private sector is growing with more and more bigger hospitals emerging across the country. Most of those hospitals have to employ healthcare assistants (locally called them as nurse aides), who were trained locally without a proper curriculum and training facilities, because of no sufficient numbers of qualified registered nurses available. If the proper training centers with high standard curriculum, teaching facilities and qualified trainers can be set up, which in turn will produce better quality healthcare assistants (nurse aides) to serve in the private hospitals resulting in improving nursing care.
2) The second point which made Dr Myat to accomplish his dream is paving a way to upgrade domestic workers in overseas (house maids) or before going to work in overseas by achieving a certificate facilitating to be employed as healthcare assistants or caregivers. In other words, that will create better country’s image of offering migrant workers with professional skills rather than unskillful workers.
3) The last force pushing him to go back to Myanmar was for the carrier development of the youth who are weak in education such as not passing matriculation exam or who are jobless. The matriculation pass rate is never be more than 40% and even a sale assistant job is asking a matriculation certificate. By achieving a professional certificate after attending the healthcare assistant training course, those youth who are not able to find a job or who cannot pass the matriculation exam may be able to stand on their own feet with a reasonable income.
One of Dr Myat’s colleagues nursing lecturer in Singapore named Ms Meera who was a former senior lecture in the school of health sciences, Ngee Ann polytechnic as well as a retired Singapore Nursing Board member had assisted him in providing frame work of designing a good curriculum and participating in the project as an advisor as she recognized Dr. Myat’s passion for his country.
Dr. Myat met a team of nurses in Myanmar who had long working experience in Singapore in various healthcare settings such as nursing home, community hospital and general hospital etc. All those nurses have a good will of improving nursing care in Myanmar and creating job opportunity and carrier development of Myanmar youth. The team then decided to support the project and worked on development of a curriculum benchmarked with the Singapore standard.
a) One of the senior nurses Ms. Myint Myint Thaung had worked as a nursing lecturer before working in Singapore and she worked in Singapore for more than 20 years up to the level of nursing manager at Kwong Wai Shiu nursing home. At that time, she was working as a quality control (Q.C) and the training manager at the Grand Hantha International Hospital in Yangon, Myanmar as well as a Principle Trainer and an academic board member of HEARTS.
b) Another senior nurse named Ms Khaing Khaing Saw had graduated from the military nursing training school and she had teaching experience as a nursing lecturer too. She retired from the military service and continued her profession as a senior staff nurse in Singapore general hospital for 8 years. She was also working the same role together as Ms Myint Myint Thaung.
c) Ms. Wai Wai Tun graduated from the University of Nursing achieving a bachelor of nursing degree. She used to work in Singapore Renci nursing home and community hospital for more than 7 years.
d) Ms. Wynnlei Phyu also had graduated from the University of Nursing and she also had worked in Singapore Renci nursing home and community hospital for 6 years too.
All team members worked hard to develop a high standard curriculum, setting up teaching pedagogy, preparing and collecting teaching aids and teaching schedules starting from March 2018.
The academic team was able to start the first batch of Healthcare Assistant (HCA) training course on the 1st of May 2018 in Yangon, MYANMAR.
In 2019, due to a good reputation of the HEARTS, the partners from some of the other divisions and the states of MYANMAR invited HEARTS to run the training centers in their respective regions. Therefore, HEARTS_Hin Tharda in Irrawaddy Division commenced in January 2019, HEARTS_Myit Kyina in Kachin State started in February 2019, HEARTS_Lashio in Shan State established in July 2019, HEARTS_Mawlamyein in Mon State and HEARTS_Hpa An in Karen State started in September 2019 and the latest HEARTS_Mandalay in Mandalay Division in December 2019, total of seven training centers can be established.
