Podiatry student Cameron Chaplin (middle) and Year 3B Gippsland Regional Clinical School student Steve Xu at right, with simulation patient 'Sharon'. The year-long program is based at Warragul hospital.

West Gippsland-based students are taking part in the Gippsland Regional Interprofessional Partnership in Simulation (GRIPS) as part of their learning and communication skills unit.

The program is being run by the West Gippsland Healthcare Group, working with Monash University to run the 12 month program. Health Workforce Australia (HWA) funds the program to help train healthcare students in five selected Gippsland sites.

It is an interprofessional learning process, with medical students paired with a student from another discipline such as physiotherapy or podiatry. Together they develop a care plan for a simulated patient and provide input based on their own fields of study.

The students carry out their initial interview with a person who plays the role of a real client of West Gippsland Healthcare Group. The experience means students can practice interviewing skills with complex clients in a safe environment without any negative consequences for the client.

By sharing the interview with a student from another discipline, medical students are able to collaborate in collecting the client’s social and medical information, work out a care plan for the client, and advise the client on possible referrals to other services.  Working closely with a student from another discipline helps both students know more about the roles and responsibilities of the other profession.

The feedback from the sessions has been enthusiastic, with one student in the West Gippsland program commenting that the scenarios were quite challenging but thought provoking and that it was good working with a student from a different discipline.

Overall the GRIPS program aims to improve healthcare students’ communication, collaboration and co-operation with clients/families and colleagues. This helps to improve client/family care.

The next Education at Technology In-Service is scheduled for Wednesday 15 May on the topic Virtual Learning Environments.

Dr Julie Willems from MUDRIH will be the presenter. For further details, or to suggest or offer to present a session, please contact Dr Julie Willems at Julie.Willems@monash.edu

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

Participants at the MABEL forum

Names very familiar to those working in the School of Rural Health have played a large role in the inaugural MABEL Research Forum held at the University of Melbourne.

MABEL (Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life) is a longitudinal national survey of doctors supported by NHMRC as a Centre for Research Excellence in Medical Workforce Dynamics, with Emeritus Professor John Humphreys one of the Chief Investigators.

Senior Research Fellow Dr Matthew McGrail, based at the Gippsland Medical School, leads the Rural Workforce Supply and Distribution theme within MABEL.

Matthew and John presented three papers at the MABEL forum: Translating rural medical workforce data into evidence-based policy; Understanding the dynamics of rural GP mobility; and Preferences for rural medical workforce retention policies.

The forum was well attended by senior academics, policy makers, and representative organisations including Health Workforce Australia, Department of Health and Ageing, Rural Doctors Association, various Postgraduate Medical Education Councils and various Rural Health Workforce agencies. The Medical Students Outcome Database project, as well as Professor Roger Strasser and Dr Sarah Strasser, were also involved. All presentations were followed by strong discussions and questioning from the audience.

The forum showcased some of the important medical workforce research taking place in MABEL, particularly those led by the School of Rural Health. It is hoped that this forum will become an annual event as the research output using MABEL data continues to grow.

More information is available at the MABEL website or by contacting Matthew McGrail.

Professor Debra Nestel at a recent international conference

Professor Debra Nestel has been in high demand at international conferences to share her knowledge, especially in use of simulation, in medical training.

In March she was invited to Riyadh by the Saudi Commission for Health Specialities where she gave a key note on Global Perspectives On Postgraduate Medical Education. She also ran a workshop on acquiring clinical competence and was invited to offer ideas in a closing session, Prism into the Future. Simulation was a central theme in each presentation.

In April, Debra delivered a key note at the Evidenz in der Vermittlung praktischer Fertigkeiten XII SkillsLab Symposium in Goettingen. She was invited to speak on realism in healthcare simulation with a focus on theory and also gave a workshop on simulated patient methodology.

Debra will soon deliver a key note address in New York at an international paediatric simulation meeting where she will be sharing lessons learned from the national training programs for simulation educators, The AusSETT and NHET-Sim programs.

The Mildura Clinical School played host to the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Provincial Fellows of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG).

The first day of the two day meeting in mid-April included four workshops using the school’s facilities.

The first was a training supervisors meeting, where those people who have volunteered to train both GP and specialist obstetricians are tutored in the mentoring and assessment of trainees.

The second was a workshop for Obstetric ultrasound, while the third was a workshop on the Fetal Electronic Surveillance Program.

The fourth was for GPs and HMOs who want to do the Certificate of Women’s Health.

Some 80 people were involved, including specialists, GPs, trainees and medical students.

The second day Friday 19 April comprised three workshops using the Sim Lab: resuscitation of the neo-nate, resuscitation of the pregnant female, and breech delivery.

The workshops were for 50 GP obstetricians and some Year 4 medical students from both the Mildura regional hub and several rural hubs.  Local paediatrician Dr Suri Hariprakash ran the simulation sessions throughout Friday morning with the assistance of Howard Cook and Jenny Timmis.

The general feeling was that the school facility was great, particularly the SIM lab. There was a small logistical problem as there were additional workshops held in another site which required some transport, however this was a minor inconvenience.

The meeting was covered by WIN TV with scenes from the SIM lab.

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.

Professor Robyn Wood addressed the audience at the Mildura ASPREE launch, held at Mildura Regional Clinical School

In a coup for Mildura Regional Clinical School, the launch of the ASPREE program in the region was held at the School.

The event received excellent media coverage from television, radio and print media and the large audience consisted of GPs, local participants, and representatives from the Mildura Rural City Council.

Guest speakers included Mayor of Mildura Cr Glenn Milne, participant and past local politician Mrs Elizabeth Maffei, Professor John McNeil, head of the ASPREE trial at Monash, and Associate Professor Robyn Wood.

The Mayor and Cr Sharyon Peart performed the ribbon cutting ceremony.

The chief message that each speaker reinforced was the importance of involvement in this international and national trial to which Australia is contributing data from 11,000+ participants.  The trial is considering the potential benefits and any damaging side effects of regular Aspirin use in people aged over 70. Professor Wood outlined the benefits and the risks of participation, reiterating that greater numbers of participants will serve to increase the study’s power.

Terry Houge supervising a couple of the community ambulance officers at Cann River

The Mallacoota workshop

A two-day ALS Physical Assessment workshop in Mallacoota in the far east of the state recently provided an excellent training opportunity for community ambulance officers.

Mallacoota is about 235 km east of Bairnsdale (or 520 km east of Melbourne).  Run by Terry Houge, Paramedic Community Support Coordinator with Ambulance Victoria, and assisted by Laurea Atkinson, the SLE Project coordinator, the workshop was attended by 23 Ambulance Community Officers, all volunteers.

It is an exciting development for the SLE project to reach remote parts of the state.

Laurea also visited Cann River, a little closer to home at a mere 165 kms from Bairnsdale, where participants took part in a workshop using the equipment available for off-site training.

Laurea and her mannequins are well sought after throughout East Gippsland for training opportunities and workshop participation which, until now, was very difficult given the distances required.

Emily Modridge

Emily Modridge is this year’s successful applicant for the East Gippsland Education Trust scholarship.

The Education Trust was established in 2010 in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Sale, the Wellington and East Gippsland Shires and the community to assist local students who gain a place to study MBBS with Monash.

Emily tells us that the money will be well used towards text books and accommodation expenses as she embarks on her first year of study at Clayton campus.

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.