Each year there is an opportunity for two Year 4C students from the East Gippsland Regional Clinical School, to undertake an exchange with two students from the University of Otago Rural Medical Immersion Program (RMIP).

Students spend the two weeks alongside the RMIP students and are involved in all aspects of the program, also managing to fit in some sightseeing.

For the two East Gippsland students, Cassie Coetzee and Chris Ward, it was a memorable and packed trip.

Fellow Year 3B student, Willian Bay, congratulates Steve Xu on his permanent residency.

Gippsland Year 3B student Steve Xu had some good news recently, having been granted permanent residency in Australia some three years after first applying.

Steve is now looking to become a true blue Aussie in about 12 months when he can gain citizenship.

Steve came to Australia some 11 years ago as an international student to complete his Year 10 studies. He did very well at secondary school, gaining entry to the Australian National University and completing a Bachelor of Biomedicine with honours.

Steve spent two years working full time and in 2010 applied for permanent residency, with his application approved just last month.

In 2012 he was accepted into Medicine at the Gippsland Medical School and this year is studying at the West Gippsland campus of the Gippsland Regional Clinical School.

Steve is very pleased he can stay in Australia to practice medicine. We also know he would be more than welcome to remain in Gippsland! He has completed the majority of his training in the region while working part time for Gippsland Pathology.

Sonya Steve

Your name and position

Sonya Steve, Program Administrator, Year 4 and Manager Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre, Bendigo

Describe your job/role

Half of my role is to coordinate the program for the Year 4 Medical Students, including their tutorials, hospital placements, and hub placements for GP rotations; the other half is job share managing the newly completed CSSC, all very exciting.

Why is it important?

Both roles are important to the students. It is essential we maximise their learning capacity within all the teaching facilities, so ensuring their schedules are accurate and fulfilling is the challenging task!

What is the best aspect of your work with the School of Rural Health?

Assisting our students through their journey of becoming health professionals and seeing them return as registered medical practitioners ready to serve the community is the best!

When you are not at work, what do you enjoy doing?

Spending time with my family and friends, book club, kids sport, ceramics, watching movies and dancing.

What was your most recent holiday destination and why did you choose it?

Queensland – totally a kids’ indulgence trip!

If you were Emperor for a day, what is one thing you would implement?

World peace!

Surprise us! What is something about you that most of your peers would not know?

I do calligraphy writing including certificates, wedding invitations and place cards etc.

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.

One by one, masked beauties trickled into Traralgon’s Premiere function on the night of Friday July 12th.

The venue was wonderfully decorated with local nature, simulating some sort of fairy’s forest – and the guests looked the part. Glitter, sequins, feathers and (sloth) fur covered the faces of Gippsland Medical School students, perhaps hiding the stress-lines incurred after a busy first semester.

But the GMS masquerade ball was about celebrating the year thus far (the cause of said stress-lines). And that we did.

Quickly, the masks came off in order to better enjoy a few beverages and quality local food, as well as some cheeky sweets from the candy bar. Guests paraded their attire in a photo booth, photos from which became more colourful as the night progressed.

Best dressed awards were awarded to coordinating couples and fancy femmes, and three GMS students dropped their stethoscopes in exchange for musical instruments, showcasing their hidden talents to the cohort.

Thanks to all those who played even the smallest role in organising the GMS masquerade ball, memories of which are now as faint as the remnant glitter on the floors of our bedrooms, with the end of the year seemingly equally as far away.

Look forward to a welcomed repose in semester two, when we can spend an evening on Facebook after the evidence from the photo booth has been uploaded for public viewing (surprise!)

–          By GMS students Julia, Tiarni and Jess.

Mark Heald has left Mildura Regional Clinical School to resume a more hands-on role with Sunraysia Community Health, in the Drug & Alcohol counselling area.

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.