A Monash Moodle Symposium, titled ‘Moving Forward with Moodle’ will be held on 6 and 7 December 2012 with the founder and CEO of Moodle, Martin Dougiamas, as the keynote speaker.

It will be held at the Monash Caulfield campus and, in addition to presentations from Monash staff, Mr Dougiamas will discuss the opportunities presented by the newest release of Moodle, version 2.3, which Monash has plans to implement in late November 2012.

The symposium aims to engage academic staff of all levels and experience with Moodle and participants will have the opportunity to develop and deepen their knowledge and discuss how Moodle has provided new opportunities to enhance learning and teaching.

The program committee is now seeking interested Monash staff to deliver a 20 minute presentation, demonstration or lead a guided discussion as part of the symposium. Potential presenters can submit an abstract of up to 250 words describing their presentation, demonstration or discussion.

Submissions should be contributed online to Moodle by Monday 15 October.

For more information please visit the Monash VLE page.

At a recent SRH Education Forum held in Bendigo, Judi Walker and Laura Major lead a discussion on the school’s involvement with the FRAME – Medical Schools Outcomes Database (MSOD) Survey and longitudinal tracking project, as well as strategies which will be implemented to increase student survey returns.

The FRAME survey is sent to students following their longest stint in a rural clinical schools and forms part of the MSOD and Longitudinal Tracking project, the world’s first nationally coordinated project for tracking medical students through medical school and into prevocational and vocational training.

The MSOD Project is a collaboration of a number of key stakeholder organisations representing students, postgraduate education and training, rural and Indigenous health, and workforce planning.

MSOD Project objectives include:

• Provision of an effective, reliable evaluation mechanism for assessing long-term outcomes of educational programs, in particular those aimed at increasing the recruitment and retention of a rural medical workforce.
• Provision of a secure, reliable source of accurate, up-to-date data for the purposes of long-term medical workforce planning.
• Determining the effectiveness of targeted programs and interventions in influencing the career decisions of medical students.
• Promotion of strategic reform of medical education policy and programs at the university, state and Commonwealth levels in order to match program and policy frameworks with national health priorities.
• Provision of an information resource for research projects for Australian medical educators that will contribute to the national and international literature on medical education.

The school’s active involvement with the project will ensure that it continues to meet all RCTS funding parameters, in particular Parameter 8 – Maintaining and progressing an evidence base.

The administration of the student survey across the school will coincide with scheduled end of semester Year 3B and 4C feedback sessions across all four regional clinical schools, to ensure all relevant students complete the survey.  This new way of administering the survey will ensure that Monash’s 2012 survey return rate will be an improvement on previous years.

For more information on the MSOD project and some more interesting facts, have a look at p26 of the August edition of Partyline magazine, published by the National Rural Health Alliance.

You can “like” the MSOD Facebook page which will keep you up-to-date with all things MSOD. You can also visit the Medical Deans website for up-to-date information

–        By Laura Major, Manager, Rural Education Program (OHoS)

Gippsland Medical School students recently completed their placement at Latrobe Community Health Service (LCHS) as part of a cross organisational experience designed to give them an insight into the range of services provided.

The Community Health Service hosted the 10 students this year, five in semester one and five in semester two. They attended various programs such as Creative House, District Nursing, Primary Intervention, Assessment, Aged and Disability Services and Drug Treatment Services.

The placements culminated in an evaluation day which, among the various formalities and perhaps as a sign of the success of the program, included an afternoon tea with a spread of home baked cakes direct from the kitchen of Student Placement Officer with LCHS Sue Townsend.

More formally, Gippsland Medical School’s Dr Margaret Simmons, CBP Academic Coordinator and Susan Smith, CBP Agency Liaison, attended to discuss the placements and confirm that the current program was meeting all student goals and objectives.

LCHS supervising staff Jane Taylor, Interprofessional Educator, along with Sue Townsend attended to give the students an opportunity to provide feedback on their thoughts and experiences during their placement and to finalise paperwork.

The student evaluations were all positive and the general consensus was that the current rotation was working really well. Some student comments were, “Keep the rotations, they worked fantastically”, “I had an excellent time and gained an appreciation of all the important services available in the community” and “learnt lots about the importance of ‘whole patient’ care and integrated care.”

Latrobe Community Health Service is looking forward to hosting the next cohort of Gippsland Medical School students in 2013.

Gary Hart (left) and Annie Tweedle (right) with Monash University medical students from left, Grace Vittor, Dorcas Lim, Bonnie Morison, Liying Chen, Rachel Elliott, Margaret Young, Ben Bentzen and Daman Tjibaenyana.

With more than a little help from local people with limited sight or Muscular Sclerosis, Monash University medical students based in Warragul learned a lot from the first of their community patient visits recently.

The students, who are undertaking their studies with the Gippsland Regional Clinical School this year, met up with patients at Vision Australia in Warragul.

The visit was organised by Gippsland Regional Clinical School community representative Mavis Gallienne and gave the students the chance to talk with patients in a relaxed atmosphere. Two local people, Gary Hart and Annie Tweedle, gave of their time to speak with the students on a wide range of topics beyond the physical condition.

The aim of the visit is to help medical students consider and understand some of the social, economic and psychological issues which face patients and also how to discuss with a patient, in a sensitive way, personal feelings about the diagnosis of a chronic disabling illness.

They were also exposed to the impact on a patient’s social, emotional and physical well being, while also discussing treatments available for MS, the cost of treatment and the economic impact on individuals with MS.

As well as taking a focused history on the patient, the students were encouraged to display empathy and, as a follow up activity, completed a written reflection on three skills that worked well in communicating with patient and three ways to improve their communication with patients. On the day after the visit, the group took part in a follow up session based on a clinical presentation of a patient with MS.

It was an extremely useful session for all involved and the students were very grateful for the time they spent with Gary and Annie, the organisation by Mavis Gallienne and the chance to meet and discuss issues with MS Society Nurse for Gippsland, Robert Slade.

Mildura Regional Clinical School is gradually collecting a nice bank of community people who enjoy being crash test dummies for mock OSCEs.

In September the Year 3 students were put through their paces in preparation for exam OSCEs later in the year.  The patients enjoy their roles, and are eager not to muck up.  Verbatim comments from the sim patients about why they are happy to help included:

• “to be part of the program to help support and retain students in Mildura”
• “I am happy to assist students and local facilities prosper”
• “A new challenge for myself”
• “[to be] valued as an individual”
• “interested in helping … encouraging medical students to the rural areas”
• “helping health professionals learn to treat patients”