President's Report: September 2022 - Jo Bishop, ANZAHPE President

This year’s ANZAHPE Festival was held online with the overarching theme of “Partnerships”.

Following the inaugural 100% virtual event of ANZAHPE 2021, the 2022 Festival committee were committed to building on its success and delivering an improved festival over a series of days in July.

Furthermore, 2022 marked the 50th Anniversary for ANZAHPE, a milestone and reason to provide additional elements into the program to help celebrate.

I would like to thank again the festival (scientific) committee in all their work to ensure a successful event, from abstract review to program allocation.

Whilst COVID 19 had reached its peak in 2021, the impact of the pandemic was still present in 2022. The new year bought an introduction of different strains of the virus further impacting on the health and education system, already under pressure. Delivering another virtual event in 2022 seemed to be the right path to ensure safety of the delegates and confidence in moving forward in the planning process.

The festival aimed to improve on the 2021 delivery with additional themes, additional streams and improving the flow and user experience by increasing the number of presentations grouped together. We also incorporated six Networking Hubs in the Festival program, as an opportunity for colleagues to network with their local peers. This element of the program centred around the opening plenary session allowing delegates and guests to interact and see each other face to face, participating in the official program and formalities whilst celebrating the 50th anniversary of ANZAHPE.

The festival sessions recognised the ongoing partnerships between members and key stakeholders as well as the new partnerships that have been formed. This is a reflection of ANZAHPE’s activities over the last twelve months, as the association continues to grow and support the needs of our most important constituents, you, the members.

The “success” of the festival must be measured against a range of factors, such as positive outcomes for participants, the successful delivery of presentations at the live event and the number of delegates who attended.

We had 372 delegates attend, with the majority of delegates responding to the online survey were satisfied with the Conference. 93.62% considered the relevance of Conference presentations and topics to be ‘good to very good’ and 91.30% rating the quality of streamed events as ‘good to very good’. The festival program included three invited plenary presenters, a Panel session and up to 5 concurrent sessions covering the themes of IPL, Ed Tech, Professionalism Culture and Welfare, Assessment, Curriculum, Faculty Development, Symposia, PeArLS and Workshops. A 6th Stream was introduced to include Poster Discussion Groups. ANZAHPE PeArLS remain popular with attendee comments such as “really valued the PeArLs this year - great topics which allowed robust discussion”.

Again, many delegates requested we return to face to face, and it is my pleasure to confirm that the 2023 ANZAHPE conference will take place on the Gold Coast between June 26^th – June 29^th. We have had a strong interest from members to join the local organising committee. You can visit our conference page here. More information will be released soon.

We would like to thank Professor Trevor Gibbs for all of his support to ANZAHPE whilst in his role, including participation in the ANZAHPE-AMEE symposium during the festival.

We welcome our continued collaborations and continued relationship with Dr Bonny Dickinson (President of IAMSE) and Dr Subha Ramaniin her role as President of AMEE.

Dr Subha Ramani (AMEE), Dr Bonny Dickinson (IAMSE) and Jo Bishop (ANZAHPE)