Matthew Campbell's family, Noel Campbell (third from left) and Christine Campbell (third from right) are pictured with (from left) Alba Anderson, Kyle Vander Kuyp, John May, Liz Wearne and Sam Alexander

Every year Monash University’s rural health club, WILDFIRE, holds a lecture dedicated to Indigenous health.

The first organised in 1994 by Matthew Campbell, then a second year Monash medical student and was attended by hundreds of medical and allied health students from Monash and other universities.

Tragically, just after the event, Matthew was killed in a car accident.  Each year, WILDFIRE holds the lecture in memory of Matthew and his passion for Indigenous health.

The seminar provides medical and allied health students at Monash University with an opportunity to hear about possible solutions to difficulties faced by Indigenous Australians that affect their mental and physical wellbeing.

This year’s 19^th Annual Matthew Campbell Memorial Evening was opened by Professor Geoff Solarsh, Director of the NVRMEN program. Guests participated in a Welcome to Country given by Wurundjeri Elder Uncle Bill Nicholson followed by a traditional smoking ceremony before enjoying the One Fire Tribal Dancers and Didgeridoo.

Speakers this year included:

• Sam Alexander, a Monash graduate entry student who intermitted his studies in 2012 to ride more than 5000 km on horseback from Victoria to far north Queensland to raise funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.  Read about Sam’s adventures on his website.
• Dr Elizabeth Wearne, a Monash graduate who is now a GP in East Gippsland.
• Alba Anderson, a Monash John Flynn Scholar undertaking her John Flynn Placement Program in the Northern Territory and working in remote Indigenous communities.
• Kyle Vander Kuyp, an Indigenous Australian and Olympic athlete who competed in the 1996 and 2000 games and broke the 110 metre hurdles Australian record in the 1995 World Championships.  Kyle has since been involved with AIME Indigenous mentoring.  Kyle is from the Worimi and Yuin tribe of North and South Coast NSW.

John May, Year 3 Monash student and active WILDFIRE member did a great job as MC on the night and was congratulated on his great effort in organising the event.

It was great to see the Campbell family enjoying this annual event which commemorates the work of their son Matthew and what he believed in most – to extend other students’ knowledge and experiences with Aboriginal health.

By Laura Major

Manager, Rural Education Program

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.

Pictured in East Gippsland during the recent visit are, from left and seated, Kristy Allen, Debra Johnston, Fiona Wright and David Campbell, with Jenny Timmis standing

As a follow on from the Gippsland Education Forum held in the Latrobe Valley recently, Fiona Wright, Jenny Timmis and Kristy Allen from Mildura followed the Princes Highway north-east to visit the East Gippsland Regional Clinical School’s Bairnsdale and Sale sites.

While at opposite end of the state, the Mildura and East Gippsland sites have a lot in common and it was great to discuss how each overcomes obstacles such as distance, staffing, tutors, course delivery and IT.

It was a fantastic visit with the sharing of ideas and experience across simulation, academia and administration that will be very useful for all staff and may well be something that the School of Rural Health sites do more regularly.

The visit was so successful that all agreed it should be undertaken twice a year with a reciprocal visit to be scheduled.

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.

The Education Faculty has announced the next round of the learning and teaching travel grants, with the closing date for applications 30 May.

The scheme is designed to assist academic staff to attend and/or present papers at conferences that will develop their educational skills and teaching and learning research activity.

The grants are allocated by the Office of the Deputy Dean (Education) on a competitive basis, with approximately 20 grants scheduled for allocation in this round.

Please note, the completed applications will need to be sent to the new DDE Applications email address.

The guidelines and application form can be accessed on the faculty intranet.

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.