You may have seen the posters announcing that the Monash Education Academy was coming. It was finally launched on 18 March.

The academy is structured around six themes:

• Recognising
• Training
• Mentoring
• Showcasing
• Researching
• Fostering

Introducing the new academy, Professor Darrell Evans, Vice-Provost (Learning and Teaching) was quite adamant that the Academy is:

• owned by the faculties as its executive is composed of faculty representatives, and
• it’s open to anyone who’s interested in teaching – both teaching and support staff.

Three main initiatives to start

These are the academies first three initiatives.

• The CEED framework (Continuing Education Excellence Development) will replace the Grad Cert (in Academic Practice??) that was compulsory for all new teaching staff. It is not an award course, but composed of modules. This gives the Academy the ability to add, change and delete modules as demand changes. CEED is designed as a continuous professional development framework.
• BTBL Bytes will be a series of online resources on a range of teaching and learning matters. It’s currently being tested and they are looking for volunteers who’d like to try them out and give feedback.
• Ten foundation fellows were inducted into the Academy today – Liz Davis from MNHS was among them. An ongoing fellowship program will be developed in future.

Student involvement

Dr Nicholas Monk (Assoc. Prof and Director IATL at Warwick University also spoke). Monash and Warwick have been collaborating on this venture as well as others. One point raised by Nicholas is how to involve students in such an academy. Darrell Evans picked up on this and said that Monash still had to work out how it involves students in the work of the Academy. One suggestion is to draw HDR students into its activities as they will become the next generation of teachers. But there needs to be other involvement.

Ideas and input

The last part of the launch was a discussion at each table about ideas for the academy. Angela Carbone was sitting on my table, so we got a very thorough run-down on the PATS (Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme). This will be closely involved with the mentoring aspect of the academy. She also mentioned her involvement with MERG (Monash Education Research Group) as education research is one of the Academy’s “themes”.

They are looking for ideas and input to shape the direction of the Academy: you can email them to education.academy@monash.edu

A question that came up in relation to SRH is “how do you motivate/encourage busy clinicians to take part in some of this?”

Where to next?

There will be another session on 5 May for people who couldn’t go to the launch, but are interested. (See home page for details.)
If you’d like to make comments, submit ideas, volunteer to test BTBL Bytes, volunteer to take part in the pilot of CEED which will start in semester two, email them: education.academy@monash.edu

Professor Alan Trounson gave a lecture to Year A students when he visited Churchill in September.

Eminent scientist Professor Alan Trounson captivated  Year A medical students with his lecture at Churchill on Monday 29 September.

Professor Trounson, Emeritus Professor Monash University, was a pioneer of human in vitro fertilisation (IVF), introducing fertility drugs for controlling ovulation, embryo freezing techniques, egg and embryo donation methods, initiated embryo biopsy, developing in vitro oocyte maturation methods and the vitrification of eggs and embryos.

He led the Australian team for the discovery of human embryonic stem cells in the late 1990s.

He told students it was an interest in farming that started his career. “I wanted to be a farmer,” he said. “I studied wool technology and ended up at Cambridge University (London), working with cattle and horses on reproduction.” (more…)

Faking it: Mildura-based clinical educators learn how to simulate wounds

School of Rural Health (SRH) clinical educators hosted their counterparts from Latrobe University and Mildura Base Hospital recently to learn the unique art of moulage at a training session in the SRH Mildura Clinical Simulation Centre.

Moulage involves the application of mock injuries for the purposes of simulating real-world experience. It is widely used to train health care professionals and military personnel in emergency medical responses.

Moulage achieves realistic simulations of injuries and medical conditions. Wounds, fractures, amputations, gunshot wounds, burns and various diseases can all be realistically portrayed.

The impact of work place accidents, violent crime, motor vehicle accidents, terrorism, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and other medical emergencies are also simulated through the use of moulage.

Laerdal Australia, a renowned provider of training for lifesaving and emergency medical care, introduced the use of moulage modelling to the Mildura-based professionals.

Among some of the very realistic wounds produced by participants on the day were those created by Clinical Skills Lecturer Howard Cook who wore his proudly, for all to admire.

Participants responded positively to the training, with everyone keen to try some modelling of their own. The success of the event leaves Mildura well positioned to become a centre for future moulage training.

Professor Debra Nestel's work in the use of simulation in healthcare education has been recognised by the presitgious Ray Page Lifetime Simulation Achievement Award.

Professor Debra Nestal received the Ray Page Lifetime Simulation Achievement Award at the SimHealth conference in late August. The award recognises an outstanding contribution to the development of modelling and simulation in science, technology, policy or industry in Australia. It is only presented if a candidate who meets the criteria is nominated.

As Professsor of Simulation Education in Healthcare for the School of Rural Health, her research interests include the role of simulation in supporting learning, particularly in procedural and operative skills.

Debra pioneered the concept of patient-focused simulation (PFS) with her colleague Roger Kneebone. In PFS, a simulated patient and simulator model (urinary catheterization, suture pad etc) are ‘combined’ in a simulated environment in order to provide a learner-centred experience. The approach has been adopted internationally for teaching, learning and assessing procedural skills in undergraduate medical education.

The Simulation Achievement Award is recognition of her significant contribution to the use of simulation in healthcare education.

September’s Journal Club will look at a mixed methods study of the impacts of bushfires on mental health and social connectedness. PhD candidate, Rouve Jan Forbes, will facilitate the session.

When: Wednesday 17 September 12.00 noon to 1.00 pm
Article: Gibbs et al, Beyond Bushfires: Community, Resilience and Recovery – a longitudinal mixed method study of the medium to long term impacts of bushfires on mental health and social connectedness, BMC Public Health 2013 13:1036

Download  the article from BioMed Central.

How to join the session

This month’s Journal Club will use Zoom which allows you to join from a desktop or laptop computer, tablet, smartphone, destop phone or videoconference facility. No matter where you are, if you’re near just about any kind of communications device you can join the session.

Keep an eye out for a follow-up email with details you need to join the session. In the meantime, see how to join a Zoom meeting and download the application to your device.

The Ed Tech Inservice series presents two sessions in September. The first will be delivered from Clayton campus as part of the e-Solutions technology fair.

Presenting in the Cloud – Tuesday 30 September 11 am – 12 pm

Prezi is an online presentation tool that enables you to create dynamic presentations and share them with an audience anywhere on any device.What’s it got over PowerPoint? Presenter, Julie Willems, will demonstrate.

Register to receive the link to join the session.

Word tips and tricks – Tuesday 30 September 1 – 2 pm

Learn some quick ways to make Word work for you. Presenters Melissa McNicol and Helen Cronin share some simple ways to supercharge your documents.

Register to receive the link to join the session.

Joining a session

Ed Tech Inservice sessions are now presented using Zoom. See here for instructions on how to join a Zoom meeting.

You can also catch up on previous sessions at the Technolgy in Education site.

Developing Health Professional Educators: Connecting Science and Theory with Learning for Clinical Practice was the theme of this year’s annual Australian and New Zealand Association of Health Professional Educators (ANZAHPE) conference.

Three members of staff from the School of Rural Health attended: Senior Lecturer SRH Churchill, Dr Kathy Brotchie; and Dr Cathy Haigh and Bill Haigh from the SRH Latrobe Valley & Warragul.

Dr Brotchie presented a paper on the 2013 Year A cohort students’ responses to a survey on the clinical skills program at SRH Churchill which  used an innovative approach to teaching clinical skills known as “the flipped classroom”. Using this approach, Students are expected to  learn the theory before coming to class (exploring the online resources and readings. Class time is then used to apply the theory.

Provided with personalised feedback from tutors in facilitated hands-on sessions, students reported favourably on their confidence, level of preparation and the usefulness of the feedback provided to them using this pedagogical structure.

The paper, entitled “More than going through the motion: first year medical students’ responses to a Flipped Classroom approach to teaching”, was included in a session exploring innovations in medical education.

Topsy turvy: Year A students endorsed the flipped classroom approach to learning clinical skills.

Panel: local community members took questions from students. L-R Katie Yeomans, Zack Haddock, Chris Saunders, Scott Cross, Phil Perry.

Year A students at Churchill attended an Indigenous health cultural day in March organised by the Indigenous Health Unit at MUDRIH.

The morning was devoted to the cultural safety training program facilitated by Hilton Gruis and Phil Perry. At the end of the session, all participants received a certificate.

The afternoon session was devoted to ‘question time’. Key individuals and Elders from the local Aboriginal community took questions from the students. The session went on for about two hours and students were able to ask what they always wanted to know but were hitherto shy to ask! Students found the sessions very informative and the discussions were lively. At the end of the session, students were seen gathered in groups around the Aboriginal Elders to further clarify their doubts and share experiences.

Students explore Gippsland during the annual mental health vacation school.

The annual mental health vacation school gets underway in mid-July.

Open to third and fourth year allied health and nusing undergraduate, honors and postgraduate students, the school aims to broaden their understanding of the mental health field. It also showcases the range of mental health services provided in Gippsland and explores career opportunities with potential employers in the region.

The mental health vacation school is a novel recruitment strategy developed by the MUDRIH Mental Health Unit and is the subject of a longitudinal research study.

WOSSP - Whole of System Student Placements

The WoSSP (Whole of System Student Placements) program launched its own website in June. The program is a collaboration between Monash and Latrobe Universities and local health services, so it needed virtual space outside those institutions. Kylie Cocking of the North West Rural Medical Education Unit set the site up using WordPress.

The site aims to give educators, prospective students and community partners information about the program.