Dean visits Bendigo
The Dean, Professor Christina Mitchell, speaks with staff and community partners at Bendigo Regional Clinical School.
The Bendigo Regional Clinical School was really pleased that the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Professor Christina Mitchell, was able to find a time in her very busy schedule to visit on 27 February for the first time since her appointment.
In a jammed pack day, and after being welcomed over morning tea by Head of the School of Rural Health Professor Judi Walker, Christina started with whirlwind tours of the clinical school, the Bendigo Primary Care Centre and the newly opened Latrobe University Rural Health School building in the Hospital Education Precinct of which Bendigo Regional Clinical School is part.
The School was particularly keen that as many of its community partners and staff as possible should join the Dean for lunch. Following a most scrumptious lunch for the 50 guests, staff then gathered in the auditorium for a staff meeting where program leaders were able to share their team’s work with the Dean.
Following her day at Bendigo Regional Clinical School, Professor Mitchell then travelled to Melbourne with Professor Geoff Solarsh and Dr Dennis O’Connor, taking a small detour to visit the Brooke St Clinic in Woodend which is one of the School’s GP Hubs.
The Dean’s visit gave a wonderful opportunity to emphasize that the clinical schools sees its academic mandate here quite differently to the way it is seen by many of the other academic units, particularly those based at the Clayton or other metropolitan campuses.
The clinical school has a special interest in working with community partners in various ways on many different projects to strengthen health services and to make educational and research inputs into a regional health system that makes some kind of difference to the health status of regional and rural communities. This has been and remains the main mandate whether through student education, applied research or direct inputs into the health system.
After the visit the Dean sent her congratulations to all staff on the wonderful work they are doing in medical education and research, and how impressed she was with the facilities, the staff commitment and the programs.