Tēnā koutou kātoa

Greetings to all staff and students. Welcome to the final edition of Medinews for 2011. First, I would like to acknowledge the Faculty’s very considerable research and teaching successes during the year. It is a year to be proud of. I offer my special congratulations to staff and students at UOC for their teaching and research successes this year which have been achieved despite the profound disruption caused by the 7000-plus earthquakes. I am hugely grateful for everyone’s work and commitment this year which is manifest in the Faculty’s accomplishments. I would like to acknowledge the fantastic work of our teaching and research staff, our general staff and of course — the most important people — our students. Thank you to everyone. I wish everyone a wonderful and restful Christmas and summer holiday. Have lots of fun, and commit many acts of gratuitous kindness to those around you! I look forward to seeing everyone bright eyed and bushy tailed in 2012.

Peter Crampton
Dean, Faculty of Medicine
University of Otago

Graduation 2011

The Class of 2011 celebrated their success at the graduation ceremony held on 10 December. The ceremony was held in the Regent Theatre this year, while the Dunedin Town Hall undergoes refurbishment.

The Te Huka Matauraka / Maori Centre held the Maori Pre-Graduation celebration on the Friday 9 December  in Castle Lecture Theatre (right) due to growing numbers for Health Science Graduates.  The Maori Centre had to move the venue from te Tumu to the Castle lecture theatre to fit every one in.

We wish all of our new graduates well for their future careers in the medical profession.

Faculty administration office renovations nearing completion

The ground floor of the Sayers building has been undergoing an update and the final stage is to be completed in time for the start of 2012. The offices for OSMS administration, Faculty Education Unit, ELM and the Faculty of Medicine administration offices have all been updated. This is the first major renovation since the building opened in the late 1960s and some of the interior spaces, particularly the old common room have been re-purposed for more office space. The Faculty IT team are now based in the building, which will bring together staff working in IT, e-learning and administration for the first time. The overall impression is that the building interior is now much lighter and greatly improved. A formal celebration of the re-furbished building will take place early in 2012.

ANZAHPE Conference 2012

Otago’s health professional educators are invited to consider presenting research at or attending  the 2012 conference of Australian &  New Zealand Association of Health Professional Educators, to be held in Rotorua in June with the theme Professionalism under Pressure. The keynote speakers at the conference include Professor Richard Cruess and Dr Sylvia Cruess of McGill University, leading researchers on medical professionalism who will be at Otago as William Evans Visiting Fellows immediately before the conference. This is the first time in seven years the ANZAPHE conference has been held in New Zealand, and offers an excellent opportunity for clinicians with an interest in the specific challenges of educating in the health professions to network and share research with each other.  Closing date for abstracts is 27 February 2012:  see http://www.anzahpe2012.co.nz/ for details. If you would like to discuss attending this conference and possibly presenting a paper, you are welcome to contact: Peter Gallagher (UOW), Tim Wilkinson (UOC) or Joy Rudland (Dunedin)

2012 Combined Heads of Departments Meeting

The annual HODs meeting date for 2012 has now been set as follows: Thursday 19 April and Friday 20 April 2012.  Please enter this into your diaries.
The location is Dunedin.

The draft agenda can be downloaded HERE

Pre-meetings are a opportunity to discuss relevant issues within your departments/areas. If there are Faculty wide issues/strategies that you feel should be discussed at the meeting please email me with the topic for Peter’s consideration.

Further details, a registration form and a formal agenda will be sent to you in the new year.

Jacqui Bradshaw
Administrator & PA to Faculty Manager
Faculty of Medicine
Te Kaupeka Whaiora

NZ Doctors’ Orchestra

We are setting up a NZ Doctors orchestra along the same lines as the Australian Doctors Orchestra and the European Doctors Orchestra.   Since 1998 the annual Australian Doctors Orchestra made up entirely of doctors and medical students, has consistently received good reviews. It has raised thousands of dollars for charity. As an example of this success, the 2011 orchestra had 160 members and performed for an audience of approximately 1000! Believing that New Zealand can do anything that Australia can, and building on our experience organising the annual Christchurch Artist Doctors Orchestra (which has been running for over 20 years), we have decided the time is ripe to start the inaugural New Zealand Doctors Orchestra. This will run over three days (Friday to Sunday) and consist of intensive rehearsals, sectionals, and organised social events, culminating in a Sunday afternoon concert.   We feel that this represents an excellent opportunity for social networking between doctors and medical students throughout the country, and would help to support members in enhancing their life outside of medicine while fostering the vast musical talents present in many doctors and students. Judging by the large amount of support we’ve received it would seem many others agree with us – we’ve had over 120 people sign up as tentatively interested, and a lot of positive comments. However, we definitely want to hear from more people – particularly from trombones, French horns, tubas, percussion, oboes, and of course when it comes to string players, the more the merrier!

With this in mind, even if you are only vaguely interested in taking part, we want to hear from you! As long as you are a doctor or medical student and as long as you have some experience (no matter how limited) playing an orchestral instrument, we consider you eligible at this stage to join   If you are interested, email us at enquiries@nzdo.org.nz or visit the web site: http://www.nzdo.org.nz/

Class of ’79 Scholarship Awards

Congratulations to the ELM students who were awarded the Class of ’79 Scholarships for 2011. Kate Johnstone (2nd year) and Anh Nguyen (3rd year) received the awards earlier in the year.   The Class of 1979 Undergraduate Medical Scholarship was established in 2005 by members of the MBChB Class of 1979.  The inaugural award was made in 2009. Congratulations to both Kate and Anh.

For other news and events from November and December 2011 see the latest edition of the Division of Health Sciences Newsletter: Pulse

Merry Christmas from the Faculty of Medicine – Te Kaupeka Whaiora