Sale and Bairnsdale hosted students on their Year 2 rural placements recently and a myriad of activities were well received by all students.

Bush Tucker Day at the Bairnsdale campus proved to be a real highlight, held to promote Aboriginal culture and heritage. Students were treated to a display of traditional items including a decorated gathering dish and other handmade utility items and were also involved in hands-on activities including making echidna-quill necklaces.

The day was led by Cassie Harrap, a local Aboriginal woman soon to become an elder in the area.

Following the activities at Lakes Entrance, students were treated to a Lake Tyers foreshore walk where Cassie enlightened them about edible plants, such as Warrigal Greens and pig face. Warrigal Greens is a leafy ground cover which can be used as a substitute for spinach and any recipe, in particular a quiche. More information on Warrigal Greens can be found at the following link: http://www.thebackyardfarmer.com.au/byf7/green.html

Cassie’s passion for her heritage, the lore and the art of her people, has been passed on from her father and she now works closely with secondary schools and other businesses to pass on her knowledge.

A highlight for Deborah Hewetson, the Year 2 coordinator, was an invitation extended to staff and Year 4C students by the Year 2 cohort, to a last night barbecue held at Paynesville on the lovely Gippsland Lakes.

Sessions in the skills lab were also held for the students, under the instruction and supervision of Deborah and Laurea Atkinson, the SLE project officer at Bairnsdale campus.  The students were able to experience the simulation equipment, the majority for the first time, and had half day sessions with ALS, SimMan, and SimMom, a particular highlight being the delivery of a baby.

Feedback from the students was excellent, albeit with humorous undertones!

In Sale, Year 2 students Sale spent an early and rather foggy morning visiting a dairy farm at Denison, half an hour’s drive from the Clinical School.

Dairy farmer Matt Coleman had already been up for some hours milking his herd of 250 cows, keeping just a few back ready for the arrival of the students at 7am.  Matt and tutor Jason McAinch, also a dairy farmer in the district, took students through the procedure associated with milking, cleaning the lines and storage of milk.

Matt emphasised that the dairy farm is a ‘food production facility’ and so requires exemplary hygiene standards. Students were given the opportunity to sample “real milk” and there was some promotion of milk by Jason as a healthy diary product versus soy drink. As Jason said “soy is not a milk…it is made from a bean!”

Students were shown the array of equipment used on a daily basis by farmers including tractors, hay forks and 4-wheelers. Jason emphasised the risks involved in the use of such machinery, issues of complacency which can lead to accidents and the need, as potentially rural doctors, to be aware of the risks often taken on farms.

Students were intrigued by the echidna quill necklaces, demonstrated by Cassie Harrap

A ‘Thanks a Million’ afternoon tea party was held for volunteers at Latrobe Community Health Service (LCHS) in mid-May during Volunteers’ Week.

According to Jane Taylor, the MUDRIH lecturer who supervises a student-centred clinic at LCHS, the volunteers are “our secret weapon in providing a powerful role in student learning.”

“The volunteers are first trained as simulated clients, and they are on call to be interviewed by Interprofessional pairs of students. We were delighted to honour two of our faithful volunteer simulated clients, who have attended regularly since the student clinic started in 2010, amongst the finalists in the ‘Volunteer of the Year’. Some of our volunteers who are our simulated clients attended for the party along with many other LCHS volunteers.”

The ‘Thanks a Million’ volunteer afternoon tea had a 1960’s Rock and Roll theme.

Kerry Bell, administrative officer at MUDRIH for the GRIPS project and who also works at LCHS, collaborated with the LCHS volunteer coordinator Joanne Creighton to create a sixties ambiance. Kerry provided some of the music and posters and also led a troupe of enthusiastic and nimble footed rock ‘n roll dancers.

“Our MoU with LCHS is often serious, but sharing in a celebratory event such as the afternoon tea is just as important as the more academic side of our collaborations within the community health service,” Jane added.

Kerry Bell enjoyed the ‘Thanks a Million’ volunteer afternoon tea, especially the opportunity to break out the dancing shoes with Greg Cake.

The East Gippsland Regional Clinical School’s Cultural Safety plan is now complete with an acrylic plaque having been mounted on the wall adjacent to the reception desk of the Sale campus.

Designed in consultation with the Koori Liaison Officer at the Central Gippsland Health Service, Sandra Neilson, the plaque acknowledges the five Koori groups of the Gippsland area and acknowledges that the East Gippsland Regional Clinical School is situated on the traditional land of the Gurnai Kurnai people.

It is hoped that an official unveiling will take place as part of local NAIDOC week celebrations in July.

The plaque, recognising Gippsland’s five Koori groups, at East Gippsland Regional Clinical School’s Sale Campus.

The Gippsland Medical School has now donated 44 laptops to various community agencies throughout Gippsland, including specialist schools Cooinda Hill, Headway, Baringa School and Moe Life Skills.

The laptops were on loan to the 2008 and 2009 cohort of Year A medical students who have since graduated as junior doctors. When the laptops were returned to the school, a decision was made to donate the restored laptops to interested community agencies.

These agencies form an integral part of the Community Based Practice Program where students spend time working with clients and learn about many of the social issues, policies and health interventions occurring in the rural area.

Students work interprofessionally with agency staff, who work hard to ensure that the placements are a beneficial learning experience for them. The school was therefore delighted to be able to assist them with these donations.

The laptops have been greatly appreciated by the agencies and by the clients themselves. Alyson Walsh from Cooinda Hill said: “We are really thrilled with the laptops, they just open up so many doors for the people we support to access information.  We also get a lot out of having the medical students here.”

A personal thank you note was also received from a client at Headway who received a laptop. These laptops have had an interesting journey!

Dr. Marg Simmons presents a laptop to Alyson Walsh of Cooinda Hill

Sixty-four teddy bears were successfully cured of their ailments at Mildura’s first ever Teddy Bear Hospital!

Wednesday morning, the concerned young-lings of Mildura West Primary School chaperoned their “sick” teddy bears to a makeshift Hospital set up in their classrooms. Teddy bear illnesses ranged from broken bones to asthma to school-itis.

The “Hospital Clinics” were set up and run by a group of gregarious medical students from Mildura Regional Clinical School.

Teddy Bear Hospital is about helping children engage with doctors and the hospital process. The aim is to take the fear out of seeing the doctor, and to replace it with positive associations.

This year, it was all about the “Patch-Adams” approach. Above all else, we wanted the kids to laugh, giggle and snort water out their noses. Therefore, the stations were funny, interactive, and slightly quirky – the goal was to subconsciously have the kids associate “Doctors” and “Hospital” with “… really fun and silly.”

The children had the chance to plaster their thumbs, bandage teddy, use real stethoscopes, drive cardboard ambulances, and perform “surgery” on “big Ted” whilst looking ultra-cute in their funny-faced mask, decorated gloves and over-sized gowns. The day involved a lot of glitter, model skeletons, x-ray machines and flashing over-sized noses. And a lot more!

The children had a blast and were sad to see the doctors leave the school. The opportunity to build the rapport and establish trust early in a child’s life is so important. This positive relationship is what we can rely on as future doctors to offer these children the best possible care.

As up-and-coming doctors the opportunity to engage with children in a structured, health care-type environment, similar to what they may experience at the hospital, is very valuable. The doctor-patient relationship is important, and children are not an exception to that. Although when it comes to building rapport and gaining trust, they add a dimension of complexity and Teddy Bear Hospital is all about learning to overcome that.

By Danielle Strong, Year 4 Mildura

Teddy specialist Fleur with her fellow 'doctors' at the Teddy Bear Hospital

The East Gippsland Education Trust has announced it will increase the amount and number of scholarships from next year.

Established in 2011 in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Sale, the Wellington and East Gippsland Shires and the community, the trust offers a bursary to local students who gain a place to study MBBS with Monash.

There have been four recipients so far, including Emily Mogridge this year, with the $1,000 used to assist with relocation, text books and the accommodation expenses experienced by rural students.

Now it has been decided to increase the amount of the Scholarship in 2014 from $1,000 to $5,000, with three scholarships available to qualifying students.

East Gippsland Regional Clinical School is justifiably proud of the work that has been done so far to assist local students in their endeavours to pursue a medical career.

As part of the commitment to the local community and secondary school students, the Year 3B group will attend Sale secondary college and speak with students from four secondary colleges about the UMAT and pathways to tertiary health education.

Emily Mogridge, the 2013 recipient of the East Gippsland Education Trust Scholarship, which will be increased next year.

Dr Ann Dettrick, author of A History of Medicine in Gippsland

While driving back and forth across Gippsland for the past year or so, Dr Ann Dettrick has found inspiration time and again in the stories of hospitals and of the doctors and nurses who treated the sick in often very difficult conditions.

That inspiration has been given solid form in the publication A History of Medicine in Gippsland. The large and handsome volume is the result not only of the passion of Dr Dettrick, senior research fellow at Gippsland Medical School, but of the assistance of so many former and present doctors and nurses across the region.

From Wonthaggi in Gippsland’s west to Gelantipy in the east they have responded to the call to re-tell their experiences, and the historical societies in 16 towns have played their part in finding a wealth of stories as well as a wonderful fund of photographs.

There are magical stories from the distant and recent past, ranging from 1839 to the modern day.

For example, there is the anaesthetist who remembered Foster’s Dr Fleming continuing to operate on a patient through his own heart attack.

In Buchan in East Gippsland there was a psychiatric case involving guns, with the police who answered the distress call asking the doctor to go in first to sedate the patient. Fortunately for all concerned, nobody was hurt apart from the psyche of the doctor.

Forming a cohesive narrative from an array of historic records, anecdotes and archives and the collective memories of so many doctors and nurses has been the aim of the book.

An attempt has been made to record the mythological elements of the past; doctors and nurses practising alone who became legends in distant geographies, travelling long distances along bush tracks to reach the sick and injured.

Legendary feats were not only to be found in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2007 the bushfires that surrounded Ensay created conditions that also required special feats of courage and trust of legendary proportions.  These collective experiences from every corner of Gippsland will live on in these pages.

The publication preserves the past and brings to life the many people who have served the rural and regional communities of Gippsland with such dedication and skill.

If anyone wishes to purchase this book it is available on line.

Gippsland Medical School has now graduated two cohorts of medical students who have begun their careers as junior doctors. The students were issued a laptop for the duration of their course which they have since returned. So Gippsland Medical School found itself with many surplus laptops.

We decided to donate them to various local community agencies. These agencies also form part of the teaching program known as our Community-Based Practice Program. The program enables students to work with and across rural community agencies to learn more about their local communities and the kinds of services offered and needed in a rural environment. Many of the agencies have expressed an interest in receiving some laptops and we are in the process of organising their distribution on an equitable basis to those agencies.

Local Elder, Uncle Willy, shows how his bowl has many uses, including as part of his musical repertoire.

A number of bush-tucker based items provided suitable fare for a morning tea hosted by Mildura Regional Clinical School in support of the Oxfam Australia ‘Close the Gap’ campaign, which raises awareness of Aboriginal Health issues.

Attendees came from the Aboriginal community, local health organisations and other community groups, together with medical students and Mildura staff to learn about the Close the Gap campaign and the appalling statistics involved in aboriginal health.  The Mildura Regional Clinical School collected 32 signatures for the pledge as part of the event.

It proved an entertaining as well as educational event.

Following the Welcome To Country the audience was enthralled by the guest speaker, a local elder known as Uncle Willy.  Uncle Willy is a storyteller of the highest order who kept everyone well and truly entertained and fascinated by the tension between traditional and westernised upbringing for Aboriginal children. 

He outlined the multiple uses of such various implements. For example, the boomerang is as much a map as it is a weapon!

Then there is what Uncle Willy dubbed the Aboriginal version of a Swiss Army Knife – his wooden bowl. It can be used as a bowl, a baby carrier, a shelter from the rain, a paddle, and to aid the sound production in his didgeridoo playing. 

Uncle Willy is an accomplished didgeridoo player and makes his own instruments; sadly there was only a brief opportunity for his music.  To conclude the presentations, an Aboriginal children’s dance troupe from a local primary school performed a traditional welcome dance.

Another highlight was provided by local Aboriginal health workers, who contributed bush tucker-based items for the morning tea table. The menu included lemon myrtle cheesecake with quandong jam, wattle seed madeleines, kangaroo pizza and crocodile with wild herbs and rice – although the last items were snapped up so quickly (pun intended) that not everyone had a chance to taste them!

Local dancers and officials gathered with a strong overarching message

The Bendigo Jockey Club was an excellent venue for this year’s welcome dinner, with everyone enjoying the evening.

The official welcome dinner for Bendigo students was again an opportunity for Bendigo Regional Clinical School to acknowledge the importance of individual contributions and expertise in the community that forms a big part of the journey for all medical students.

The Welcome Dinner this year was held in mid-February at Silks, Bendigo Jockey Club.  Auntie Faye Carter and her son Rodney opened the evening with a smoking ceremony in their Welcome to Country.  The evening was filled with fun, good food, relaxation and cheer.

As is tradition, two students were presented with awards during the evening.  The Shaker Issa Award went to Adelene Hilbig for the most outstanding Year 4 student for 2012 and the 2012 John Gault Award went to Jennifer Tang for her outstanding academic performance in Year 3.

Three Excellence in Teaching Awards were presented by the University of Melbourne’s Director of Medical Student Education, Professor Julian Wright, to Dr Patrick Cooney, Mr Damian Cleeve and Dr John Edington.