The group of 2013 Mental Health vacation school students and MUDRIH staff.

Eighteen students from four universities took part in the 2013 Gippsland Mental Health Vacation School program.­

Hosted by MUDRIH, the five day program provided students with an insight into living and working in the mental health and alcohol and drug service sectors in Gippsland.

The program topics on Monday and Friday provided students with an overview of the mental health and alcohol and drug service system, an insight into current trends in treatment and support in the two fields and the opportunity to ask a panel of workers from the region about living and working in Gippsland.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were spent traveling and visiting a variety of mental health and alcohol and drug services across the region.

The busy schedule was broken up by some social activities, with the highlight this year a ‘Christmas in July’ dinner at Gippsland TAFE’s Waratah Restaurant.

Coordinated by MUDRIH, the program would not be possible without the support of the mental health and alcohol and drug services providers across the region. This year, 15 organisations from across Gippsland supported the program by providing guest speakers and/or hosting student visits.

As a further innovation, the project team is currently trialling the use of social media to allow students to maintain links to the region following the vacation school.

Facilitated by MUDRIH, students and service providers are invited to a closed group environment in which students are provided with information about placement and employment opportunities in the region, information regarding professional development opportunities and are encouraged to share their achievements.

The team also hopes to trial an ‘on-line’ version of the vacation school in late 2013. For further information contact Keith Sutton.

Michelle Machado was recently funded by the School’s conference support fund and Gippsland Medical School to attend the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) in Scotland.

Michelle presented a poster on ‘The learning of anatomy by medical students from different backgrounds in a graduate entry course.’

She also took advantage of a day tour to the anatomy facility at the University of Dundee to observe new techniques of cadaveric preservation. The university is the first of its kind in the UK to use the “Thiel method’ of preservation to achieve tissue fixation which aids in high quality dissections.

Michelle’s participation at the conference has enabled her to acquire the tools and resources needed to become a better medical educator. She plans on attending the 2014 IAMSE conference in Nashville, USA where she has been invited to tour the surgical skills facilities.

Professor Debra Nestel from the Gippsland Medical School continues to play a lead role on the world stage, attending the invitation-only meeting of the Global Network for Simulation in Healthcare in Paris on July 29-31.

The meeting brings together leaders of healthcare simulation from around the world and Debra was attending in her capacity as Chair of the Australian Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

Debra will deliver an oral presentation during the Second International Conference on Faculty Development in Health Professions at the AMEE Conference in Prague this month.  She will also run a workshop on ‘The AusSETT and NHET-Sim Programs: a national investment in faculty development for healthcare simulation educators/technicians.’

Debra has accepted an invitation as the Howard S. Barrows Keynote speaker at the opening plenary session of the Association of Standardized Patient Educators in Indianapolis in June next year.

As part of the ongoing Practice Nurse Education Group program, a General Practice Emergencies workshop was held at the Bairnsdale campus of East Gippsland Regional Medical School recently.

Results from the workshop show that as well as being a valuable learning experience for the medical practice nurses, it is also a positive networking opportunity as many of the participants travel from rural and remote areas of Gippsland.

Comments noted that the workshop was a positive reinforcement of existing knowledge, gaps in knowledge were covered and there was special mention of the introduction to SimMan as a learning tool.

Specific topics for the latest workshop included Management of Chest Pain and Anaphylaxis, Management of Asthma and a Structured Approach to Psychiatric Emergencies.

The workshops are designed to give medical practice nurses up to date training opportunities and have been held regularly over the last three years.

Each workshop offers a number of topics and all participants help by providing feedback and evaluation. The responses are taken into account when developing future program topics.

The program is well supported by local medical practitioners and nurse educators who run the topic discussions and instruction.

The Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA) is holding its first webinar for 2013 next Tuesday, 13 August, which is free of charge and open to members and non-members alike.

The open invitation has gone out to those in the School of Rural Health, with registrations needed by Friday 9 August. All you have to do is reply to jo.osborne@utas.edu.au by 4pm Friday.

An email acknowledgement will be sent on receipt of registration with details of how to access and join in the webinar. It is from 4 to 5pm (Australian EST) on Tuesday, 13 August.

Topic of the webinar is: Digital Assessment – no place for paper?

Presenters include:

Dr Andrew Fluck, Senior Lecturer in Information Technology, School of Education, University of Tasmania who will discuss eExams

Kerry Earl, Senior Lecturer, Professional Studies in Education, University of Waikato, NZ – Short text assignments

Dr Barrie Todhunter, Associate Director, Faculty of Business & Law, University of Southern Queensland – Digital group assessment

Sally Jordan, Deputy Associate Dean (Assessment), Faculty of Science, Open University UK – Computer-marked assessment with feedback

With a focus on practitioner experience, the expectation is that the webinar will run as short presentations on individual aspects of the theme, followed by discussion/questions from the ‘floor’.

ODLAA is a professional association of educators, instructional designers, educational researchers, education consultants, and administrators from across Australia and overseas that is dedicated to advancement of research, practice, and support of education ‘across time and space’.

Paramedic Terry Houge from Orbost is pictured taking Ambulance Community Officers through a scenario at the workshop in Bairnsdale.

Ambulance Community Officers in Far East Gippsland are receiving excellent professional development through a program run by East Gippsland Regional Clinical School in association with Paramedic Community Support Coordinators.

East Gippsland Regional Clinical School, Bairnsdale was successful last year in securing a simulation grant from Health Workforce Australia (HWA) to support clinical education for the East Gippsland region.

The campus was able to purchase sophisticated simulation mannequins to support professional development and collaboration between health professionals, and provide opportunities for inter-professional educational activities at a local level.

Creation of the Simulated Learning Environment project, under the leadership of Marnie Connolly and supported by project officer Laurea Atkinson, has also created opportunities to support an outreach program for health care professionals.

As part of this program, a series of workshops is being held at the Bairnsdale campus, with Ambulance Community Officers from Mallacoota and Omeo participating in simulation scenarios. These are run by Paramedic Community Support Coordinators, Terry Houge from Orbost and Scott Fyfe from Omeo.

Ambulance Community Officers are all volunteers in their local community. Sophisticated technology allows them to experience lifelike simulated events. The hands-on experience in collaborative patient care develops skills particularly advantageous to health care workers in remote areas.

Terry and Scott both agree that such hi–tech training is designed to give the Ambulance Community Officers a controlled training environment yet one that is as real as possible. They also believe opportunities such as this are an invaluable tool for paramedics and Ambulance Community Officers from remote areas.

A program of workshops will be held over the next few months with Ambulance Community Officers visiting from the relatively remote communities of Mallacoota, Omeo and Cann River.

The project is possible due to funding made available by Health Workforce Australia.

The students managed to get a feel for stomas thanks to some innovative ‘gown-art.’ The students are pictured with their gowns and artificial stomas.

Learning about stomas, while medically interesting, is perhaps not the most inviting topic.

However Year 3B students at Warragul managed to see the lighter side of stoma study while still learning a lot about the condition, which is a surgically made opening from the inside of an organ to the outside and usually requires some sort of external bag.

Gippsland Regional Clinical School’s Renee Laidlaw (right) and Michelle Livingstone measure up the area for cubicle curtains in the revamped Clinical Skills Room, along with local tradesman Charlie.

The clinical skills training facilities at Gippsland have been undergoing significant upgrades in the past few months.

As well as the opening of the new simulation labs upstairs in the former accommodation floor, the Clinical Skills Room downstairs is also being refurbished as part of a $4 million training precinct shared with Latrobe Regional Hospital and the School of Nursing.

The upstairs area includes two state-of-the-art simulation suites with five of the latest simulator mannequins.  There are also observation rooms, complete with one-way glass and the latest in video monitoring equipment, adjoining the simulation suites.

While the work on the clinical skills area has not been quite as major, it still means a significant improvement in its usability.

The old carpeted floor has been replaced with more appropriate and clinical-looking flooring and a proper basin has been installed. Curtains to create hospital-style cubicles are also being installed.

The overall project means better facilities that will be used by School of Rural Health medical students, the Monash School of Nursing and Midwifery and Latrobe Regional Hospital staff.

The Chinese delegation at the Bendigo Regional Clinical School with staff.

A delegation of Chinese health professionals, hosted by Bendigo TAFE, visited the Bendigo Regional Clinical School recently and was particularly intrigued by our training methods and use of facilities such as simulation suites.

The group of 10 health professionals (nine medical specialists and one nurse) is from Lanzhou, Gansu Province, North West China, and is visiting Australia for a study program to improve English language skills and learn about the Australian Healthcare system and culture.

Bendigo staff had the privilege of spending time with the delegates for a morning before the delegates visited the La Trobe Rural School, also situated in the Bendigo Hospital education precinct.

The group will spend three months in Australia with members visiting health services across Bendigo and the Loddon Mallee Region for the first two months, followed by a month in Melbourne. The delegates’ medical specialties are in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Psychiatry, Cardiology, Respiratory medicine, Dental, Radiology/Ultrasound and Nursing.

The Chinese delegates were given a tour around the Monash building by Bendigo Regional Manager, Kerrie Thomsen and they enjoyed browsing through the Bendigo Health library.

The favored opportunity was observing students participating in a clinical simulation session run by Cathy Driver in the Monash Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre. The delegates are familiar with clinical skills and simulation suites but were particularly interested to see how they are used them in Australia. They were surprised that only a small group of three students were being taught as well as the relaxed and friendly environment.

They particularly enjoyed seeing the equipment in use during the simulation and asked many questions about the cost of the center and the cost of training a medical student.

After the presentation of a gift to each delegate and a group photo, Monash staff were invited to visit Lanzhou if ever in China. Thank you to Angela Cahill, Director, Health and Human Services at Bendigo TAFE, for inviting Bendigo to participate in a lovely morning.

The July Ed Tech Inservice will be in and around iPads and Androids.

Fiona McCook and Helen Chambers will be facilitating a session “Cool Tools on my Android/iPad.”

There will be an emphasis on sharing which apps may be useful, while also learning from the experiences of others. The central theme is: “We are not experts in this field, just willing to share and learn from others!”

The Inservice takes place on Wednesday 17 July from 1pm until 2pm, via video and teleconference from the MUDRIH videoconference room.

How to join the session: In person at the MUDRIH videoconference room or from a videoconference endpoint:

• inside Monash dial 35929
• outside Monash dial 35929@monash.edu or 130.194.20.3 then enter conference 29
• From a telephone (audio only) dial 03 9903 5929