Mungo National Park: Aboriginal people have walked through this landscape for thousands of years and survived extreme climate change that dried up the lakes that were once the lifeblood of the region.

Rain failed to dampen the spirits and experiences of Year 2 medical students on their annual visit to the Mungo National Park near Mildura.

Each year, the students who visit Mildura for the Year 2 rural placement program are taken by bus to Mungo National Park in the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area where they are given a tour behind the barricades with an Indigenous park ranger.

Heavy rain in the first week of the students’ placement saw the local council close the dirt road which delayed the tour by a week. The rain also forced the postponement of the school’s sports event in which many of the students participate.

This year, Mildura hosted an increased number of Year 2 students. Several new sessions were included in the busy two-week timetable. These included:

• changing the focus of the farm visit to incorporate current OH&S farm dangers such as heavy machinery, heights and mental health issues
• a panel discussion with three local patients sharing their personal health stories with an emphasis on the tyranny of distance and the impact of the lack of facilities in rural and remote areas
• School of Rural Health Mildura staff conducting interactive scenarios using the clinical skills laboratory as well as prescribing dilemmas for diabetes, and
• many of the Year 2 students participating in Teddy Bear Hospitals at local primary schools.

Simulation: Pam Harvey (left) discusses mobility aids with a student during an occupational therapy session, and (right) a student practices wound dressing in the Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre.

This year’s revamped Year 2 program in Bendigo involved a mix of new and tried educational experiences.

“With a cohort of 39 students, activities were often split into three so that smaller groups could get to know each other,” said Lecturer Pam Harvey.

“This year, students travelled to either Rochester, Dingee or Lockington to visit a working dairy farm and look at health services in the town.

“These communities embraced our students, giving their time and knowledge generously,” she said, adding “community involvement was a theme of our program.”

Pam said 13 GP patients had participated in the program’s simulated general practice consultation, and volunteered to return ‘any time’.

“They willingly talked to students about their health issues, offering students insight into how people manage their daily lives while coping with often complex issues.

“Students were also able to discuss illness and its effects with two people living in the community who have had strokes.

“We called these sessions ‘Stories of Recovery’ to highlight the role that rehabilitation and community care have for people adjusting to disability,” said Pam.

The Year 2 program also saw students spend time in local hospitals with senior students, and in the skills lab with clinical educators.

“The best outcome was that nearly half of the students wanted to know how they could apply for a rural placement in Year 3,” said Pam.

“My thanks to the hard working Bendigo Year 2 team for their organisation, patience and ingenuity.”

Year 5 MBBS student Naveen Tenneti recently completed a six-week placement with the Mallee District Aboriginal Service in Mildura and gained some new insights into rural health services.

As a medical student, you always enter your first day of a new placement with nervous anticipation.

There are two factors that will come to define your experience; the willingness of the ‘team’ to include you and the patients you are dealing with.

While the fact that no-one knew I was coming certainly did not allay my fears on the first day, my six-week placement at the Mallee District Aboriginal Service in Mildura has had a strong influence on my understanding of community and Indigenous health, and left me inspired to further my understanding of primary health care Read the rest of this entry »

The range of health and education programs and courses delivered in Mildura was explored at the North West Health Education & Employment Conference on 29 April.

The School of Rural Health Mildura helped sponsor the conference which looked at the health programs and courses delivered by local universities, TAFEs and registered training organisations in Mildura.

The conference focused on skills shortages, highlighting employment opportunities that exist locally for graduates.

School of Rural Health Mildura’s former director, Dr John Russell, was guest speaker and admissions processes were outlined by Jenny Phillips from the Monash MBBS Admissions Office.

Local students, Emma Sanderson and Ellen O’Connor, were part of a student Q&A panel, giving an overview of their life as a rural student and their pathway into medicine.

A mini expo was held over lunch with workshops and plenary sessions.

Dr Joseph Tam

Traralgon paediatrician Dr Joseph Tam hopes to bring more medical practitioners to the region during his tenure as Associate Professor in Rural Medicine (Hospital Medical Education) and Director of School of Rural Health Latrobe Valley & West Gippsland.

The Hong Kong-born doctor said he was honoured and privileged to be appointed to lead Australia’s first school of rural health, with significant medical history and a strong Gippsland connection.

“It started off at the old Moe hospital and has blossomed into a world class rural medical education institution. I’m humbled to be offered the position,” Dr Tam said.

Dr Tam said he has two broad objectives – to work with all stakeholders to fine tune and consolidate the medical program and develop a model of education in partnership with regional hospitals and health services to ensure a sustainable rural health service.

He said the Monash School of Rural Health had been successful establishing training for young doctors in rural health.

“I’ve seen the fruit of hard work of everyone involved, there are seven residents at Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH) born and bred in Gippsland, who all did their medical training at Churchill,” Dr Tam said.

The well-travelled doctor came to the Latrobe Valley in 1998 from the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in Sydney with a belief that “one of the best ways to educate ourselves is to experience what other people do and how they live”.

He became the only visiting consultant paediatrician at LRH and spearheaded the development of the small paediatric service into a department of five paediatricians and six paediatric hospital medical officers, who provide 24-hour, seven-day on-site services at the hospital.

Head of School, Professor Judi Walker, said Dr Tam came to the position with “outstanding credentials”, including extensive experience in the development and delivery of regional medical education.

“He has substantial clinical and administrative leadership experience and has established strong working relationships with his patients and their families, allied health professionals, colleagues, students and health service executives,” Professor Walker said.

Dr Tam will continue his private consulting practice at LRH.

Pam Harvey, Lecturer at School of Rural Health Bendigo, has 23 educational DVDs in the Medical Education Unit library system.  These DVDs come from the CEO of the now defunded Rural Health Education Foundation, Helen Craig.  Helen sent these DVDs to the School of Rural Health and Pam Harvey can be contacted on 5440 9083 should you wish to borrow them.  These DVDs are available to all SRH staff.

• Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Guidelines Series
• All Ears:  Healthy Hearing in Indigenous Communities
• Fly-in-Fly-out: A Healthcare Option
• Acne Vulgaris: Not Just Skin Deep
• Endometrial Cancer: Investigations and Referral
• Outback Healers and Heroines: Women GPs in Rural Practice
• The Discomfort Zone: A Guide to Managing Difficult Consultations
• Helping Children with Autism
• Women in Rural Medicine
• A is for Asthma: Managing Asthma in Primary School Kids
• Self-harming Behaviours: Management in Adolescence
• Telehealth: The New Bush Telegraph
• Natural Disasters and Psychological Trauma
• DCIS: Is it cancer, doctor?
• Healthy Eating: The latest Australian dietary guidelines

Dr Tim Spelman of the Burnet Institute introduces the evening.

The 20^th annual Matthew Campbell Memorial Evening on 2 May 2014 adopted the theme “Indigenous Wellbeing Solutions and Success” and featured stories of achievement in different fields.

The first event was organised in 1994 by then Year 2 medical student Matthew Campbell to promote awareness of Indigenous health and look at strategies that can be used to improve it. A few days after the event, Matthew was tragically killed in a car accident. Monash’s rural health club WILDFIRE continues to organise the event each year in Matthew’s memory.

Dr Tim Spelman introduced the evening this year. A public health specialist currently working with the Burnet Institute, Dr Spelman was also a classmate and close friend of Matthew Campbell and helped organise the original event. Four speakers followed Dr Spelman.

Inala Cooper, Senior Advisor of the Yulendj Indigenous Engagement Unit, discussed the University’s Indigenous Action Plan and the processes which were taken to develop it.

Ngaree Blow, the 2013 AMA Indigenous Peoples Award Winner, discussed her experience as an Indigenous medical student and work with the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association.

Dr Rob Roseby, a paediatric respiratory physician with substantial experience working in central Australia, detailed some of the tragedies and successes of his time in Alice Springs along with providing useful advice for the future practice of those attending.

Bianca Graham, the first Indigenous woman to complete the New York marathon, spoke of her experience training with the Indigenous marathon project and then completing the marathon and the effect it had on her home community in upper north Queensland. (WILDFIRE announced their involvement with the Indigenous Marathon Project.)

Speakers for the evening included (L-R) Robert Roseby, Bianca Graham, Ngaree Blow

Tom Nice from AIME (Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience) attended the evening. He talked about the possible involvement of students in the program.

Each year the Paddle Prize is also awarded for an essay on that year’s theme. Alannah McLaughlin was this year’s winner for her illustrated essay on the topic.

A research proposal led by Associate Professor Pam Snow has won a faculty learning and teaching research grant of $17,000 to investigate a new approach to communication skills training for medical students.

Interviewing patients is an integral component of all health professions’ day-to-day clinical work and underpins how effectively practitioners gather diagnostic information and explain management plans. Communication issues are a major concern for regulatory bodies. A recent Australian report of complaints against medical practitioners revealed that nearly a quarter of concerns related to communication issues.

Communication skills training is integrated in the medical curriculum of many universities and generally focuses on clinician behaviours and effective transfer of information. Best practice guidelines around questioning and interviewing technique, however, remain unexplored. Evidence from a different discipline – training investigative interviewers – suggests that learners should be provided with explicit instruction about what to say in key situations. As far as possible they should not be allowed to “flounder” and rehears errors. No studies exist which have applied the (forensic) investigative interviewing evidence to the training of clinicians.

The project will adapt an existing method of clinical interviewing (the Calgary-Cambridge teaching method) then compare and contrast commonly-used interviewing training with the adapted model. The research will aid preparation for a collaborative research project between Monash and Deakin Universities. This larger project will be multi-disciplinary and multi-site with links to interviewing methods in medicine, nursing, allied health and forensic (child protection investigative interviewing) work.

What role can health infomatics and complementary medicine play in resolving the health care crisis? Associate Professor Andrew Stranieri from the Centre for Infomatics and Applied Optimisation at Federation University posed this question at a seminar on the subject hosted by MUDRH in April.

The Health infomatics discipline deals with how to optimise the collection, storage and use of information in health and biomedicine. Associate Professor Stranieri’s research combines argumentation theory with machine learning and led to a new approach for modelling discretionary reasoning and numerous commercial decision support systems. His research formed the basis of approaches to support group reasoning.

The seminar was well attended by staff and students from Gippsland.

Dr Melinda Goodyear is project manager of the Mental Illness Research Fund (MIRF) project led by Associate Professor Darryl Maybery. Her work and the MIRF project focus on families with a parent with a mental illness. She presented at the COPMI/FaPMI [title: children of parents with a mental illness/families where a parent has a mental illness] International Conference and Research Meeting in Prato, Italy, in December 2013.

The top 30 international researchers in the field attended the meeting so Dr Goodyear was able to profile MUDRIH as a leader in this area of research. Her presentation resulted in the establishment of an international collaboration to write a conceptual paper on family resilience, and another to work on an ARC grant application on the transition to parenthood.

Dr Goodyear was also able to set up mentorships with Professor Joanne Nicholson (Professor of Psychiatry at the Darmouth Psychiatric Research Centre, USA) and Dr Brenda Gladstone (Center for Critial Qualitative Health Research, Canada).