Sibon Fuzzard

The Northern Victoria Regional Medical Education Network (NVRMEN) is a collaborative partnership between the rural clinical schools of Monash University and the University of Melbourne.

Established in 2006 to address the need for more doctors in rural areas, it provides extended clinical training in rural Victoria to 60 students each year, 30 from each university. This group is known as the Extended Rural Cohort.

Bendigo hosts students from both universities for their first clinical training year, and this year’s group included Sibon Fuzzard.

Sibon has lived in Bendigo most of her life and chose to study at the University of Melbourne but spent time at the Monash Bendigo Regional Clinical School, along with other University of Melbourne students. The next stage of Sibon’s studies is a trip to Africa. This is part one of Sibon’s story.

Medical school can seem like a series of obligations – exams, study, lectures, and ward rounds.

It can seem like hard work with little reward, a road that winds on and on with no apparent end in sight!

I am thankful that all of these worries are melting away with the rapid approach of graduation and internship. I now see the study as a pleasure, expanding my knowledge and opening my eyes to solutions for healthcare problems.

The exams are done and dusted; with the power of hindsight they didn’t even seem that bad. Those niggling doubts that the rewards of my labour were minimal have vanished.

I am about to become a doctor; and before I do, I have the life changing opportunity to travel to Africa for my elective placement.

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The Monash University Ultimate Frisbee team, with Martin Chan fourth from right in the back row

One of Gippsland Medical School’s Year A students, Martin Chan, qualified to compete in Monash University’s Ultimate Frisbee team at the recent Southern Uni Games– and came home with a bronze medal.

Ten universities competed at Ballarat and the Monash team, with Martin in the key position of ‘handler,’ managed to beat the University of Tasmania for the bronze.

This was Martin’s first full campaign, having played Ultimate Frisbee sporadically for two years prior to 2013. His role as the ‘handler’ is similar to a quarterback in American football. Handlers are responsible for maintaining possession of the disc, making smart, decisive and accurate passes to find receivers to move the disc and score goals. Games are 80 minutes long and with overtime can run for more than 100 minutes.

The tournament spanned four days and after winning five out of the six pool games, the Monash team came up against University of Melbourne team in the semi-final with Melbourne winning 9-5. Martin’s team beat the University of Tasmania team for the bronze medal.

Martin found the experience amazing and is now trying out for selection in the Monash team for the Australian University Games. He would love to make the squad to play with Australian representatives and the best university players in Australia, and to be on team that takes the ‘Gold’ back to Monash University from the current champions, the University of Melbourne.

The much anticipated ‘Night at the Museum’ event to end second term at Mildura Primary School provided a fantastic opportunity for Monash Regional Clinical School to engage with the community and provide a variety of props for the Australian History unit showcase event.

More than 270 children experienced the Grade 5/6 museum evening, with many parents also taking the opportunity to view their children’s hard work first hand.

Seven children selected the World War nurses as their topic of choice and these children were extremely grateful for the resources provided by Monash Regional Clinical School.

The other really good news is that Mildura Primary hopes this interaction is the first of many involvements between the two parties!

Charlotte at NAIDOC Week Welcome Baby to Country, Mildura

The following report is by Ann Bowen, sister of Kate Murdoch, the Year 3 Academic Administration officer at Mildura Regional Clinical School. Ann attended this public event, which was sponsored by Monash University.

NAIDOC week was huge for me.  The exciting win in our Pennant Golf Final was trumped by the inaugural “Welcome Baby to Country” ceremony at the Mildura Arts Centre.

A partnership between Monash University, Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention Legal Service and the Mildura Arts Centre, the ceremony traditionally ‘welcomed’ all new Koori babies to this country and this community.

At this year’s event there was an air of excitement as the families arrived. They eagerly presented their babies for symbolic face painting, in final preparations for the ceremony.

Huge photographic portrait banners framed the stage.  Film footage of the Murray River made up the backdrop.  The ceremonial possum-skin cloak lay across the grand piano.

Yorta Yorta opera singer, composer and academic, Deborah Cheetham sang The Water is Wide to honour a young Aboriginal man, recently deceased.  She then sang Songs My Mother Taught Me.

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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.

Rebecca Kippen

Dr Rebecca Kippen, an ARC Future Fellow with the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne, has joined the Office of Research for a six-month visit.

Rebecca is a demographer and during her visit will be working with the researchers within the Office of Research on joint projects and publications.

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.