I’ve worked as a health professionals’ educator for ten years. Starting in my honours year I realised that teaching was something I was passionate about. It was also something I was raised to be, coming from a family of educators. In my current role as a lecturer I coordinate and teach public health and health research methods to Medical, Biomedical, Public Health and Health Science undergraduate students at Monash University. I’ve received awards for teaching excellence, particularly in relation to my contributions to student wellbeing. In more recent years I have conducted health professionals research which focuses on the employability of our graduates. This has included the development of a dataset mapping students careers through LinkedIn and numerous interviews of alumni and students. Some of which I have shared at previous ANZAPHE festivals. I am currently undertaking my Master of Education at the University of Melbourne.  

I joined ANZAPHE as an Associate Fellow to connect with liked minded professionals, sharing collective wisdom and resources. As someone who is passionate about others career’s I see this as an opportunity to develop my own.  I look forward to expanding my connections with the ANZAPHE community. 

Dr Jessie Zhou is a junior doctor at Melbourne Health, with a background in pharmacy. She is passionate about medical education and looks forward to mentoring and growing ANZAHPE's junior members. Currently, she is involved with the teaching of medical students and current research projects focus on mentorship and the use of technology to improve teaching and learning. Outside of medicine, she enjoys graphic design and running.

Jessie is happy to be contacted about all things medical education and looks forward to collaborating with the ANZAHPE community!
Email: jessiezhoumd@gmail.com

Key areas of interest include: Clinical Education, Technology in Healthcare, Advocacy, Multimedia/Design and Research.

Dear all,

This bulletin will include updates from various portfolios that are led by members of your Committee of Management (CoM).

A 50^th anniversary committee has been formed to commemorate this significant milestone in July 2022 with the first of the celebrations to be held as part of our Festival networking hubs on July 8^th.  The committee members include; Julie Ash, Chinthaka Balasooriya, Jo Bishop, Ben Canny,  Monica Moran,  Phillippa Poole, David Prideaux, Gary Rogers, Dale Sheehan,  Andy Wearn, Tim Wilkinson and  Jill Romeo. Please feel free to reach out to anyone of us with any personal stories you would like to share.

Last week we launched the 2022 Festival website with theme of  'Partnerships’. We are excited that so many of you have appreciated the early details and opportunity to prepare abstracts for the January 31 deadline.

The Festival committee would like to invite additional abstracts reviewers from our membership, if you are interested, please contact us. 

Our first ANZAHPE ONLINE event for 2022 will focus on student support, but whilst supporting students how do we support ourselves as health professional educators; “Bouncing Forward; Mental Wealth for Staff and Student”.

As we farewell 2021, this is a great opportunity to reflect on our personal and professional achievements, and how we can best prepare for 2022. For some this will be a festive season but for all of us this is a break away from work to spend quality time with those we care about, including ourselves.

Jo Bishop
ANZAHPE President

Do you know a recent graduate and involved in an educational project at your workplace?

Have you supervised a student enrolled in a health professional programme to complete an educational study?

Are you are working on a postgraduate degree studying health professions education? 

We invite all ANZAHPE members to encourage a student or colleague to apply for an ANZAHPE prize

ANZAHPE offer 4 prizes (each AU$500) to students, early-career educators, and early-career researchers:

• The ANZAHPE Pre-Registration Student Prize (Sponsored by the Australian Medicines Handbook)
• The ANZAHPE Post-Registration Student Prize (Sponsored by the Australian Medicines Handbook)
• The ANZAHPE Clinical Education Prize (Sponsored by Richard Hays) 
• The ANZAHPE Early Career Health Professions Education Research Prize 

For information on application guidelines, materials, and eligibility criteria

 click here

The closing date for applications is 31 January, 2022.

Outcomes will be announced in April, 2022

Prizes are awarded at the Festival.

Greetings! I am Anna Vnuk, the membership secretary for ANZAHPE, also the Diversity Equity and Inclusion lead on Committee of Management.  I work for James Cook University on the beautiful lands the Gunggandji, Yidinji, Tjabukai and Yirrganydji people.  

Since taking on the role of membership secretary, I have been working with the Committee of Management to continue to assist our members in their roles as health professional educators.  

We surveyed the membership at the end of 2020 and know that members want professional development, networking opportunities and assistance in developing in their roles.  

The conference/festival is a wonderful professional development opportunity - for people to present their work and to learn from others.  It is also a wonderful opportunity to network – interact, exchange ideas, connect, develop a sense of collegiality and shared purpose, even to develop opportunities to work on joint projects together – and this networking is sometimes by chance and sometimes planned.  However, due to covid, some of networking opportunities have been missing because the Festival/Conference has been on line.   

While we are pleased with the experience of the online Festival in 2021, we have also worked to put professional development on line throughout the whole year.  

However, to respond to the need for networking opportunities, we are now organizing to create a series of networking events in 2022 which will aim recreate the serendipitous act of walking to morning tea with someone you just sat next to at a presentation, with whom you have started a great conversation…..  

We have three potential networking dates planned for 2022: likely March, May and November but we need some more specific input from Members to ensure that they will hit the mark.  

We are aware that members want the opportunity for communication and impromptu conversations but these usually occur best after some shared experience, so one of our ideas has been for a sort of journal club where we choose an article that is interesting to health professional educators (and we are very open to suggestions for this and are thinking of using FOHPE articles) and pre-circulate it so that those who have a bit of an opportunity can read it, but obviously, that would not be compulsory as this is networking not homework.  We would start with a 5 minute chat by our session lead, who would be one of the ANZAHPE fellows.   Then we would break into small groups for discussion and chat for 20-30 minutes and then have a large group session with people sharing their insights and then a chance for more chatting.   

Another need from the membership survey is hearing about career pathways – many health professional educators have come directly from the clinical arena and find the education and academic pathways unclear and confusing and so we are thinking of running a sessions where members can talk with others who have transitioned into education or academia (or are successfully straddling between education and clinical work) to find some tips and strategies.  

Another need from the membership survey is mentoring and finding out about the Fellowship scheme and this is another one of our potential networking events for 2022.  

So please contact me with any ideas for networking events for 2022 and beyond.  

Other possible plans are to encourage members to contribute their career stories which we will publish on line so that we can develop an understand of the diverse backgrounds and journeys of our members.  

We are also reviewing the membership fee structure and our recruitment processes to ensure that there is equity, diversity and inclusion within our membership.  As ANZAHPE’s aim is to benefit the community by seeking to ensure that medical and health professionals receive training of the highest possible standard, we must also ensure that we are including all members of the community, and all members of the medical and health professions.  

Looking forward to hearing from members!

Anna 

Email Anna here

Dr Sarah Rennie, [BMSc(Hons1), MB ChB PhD FRCSEd(Medal) FRACS] is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Australasia. She works as a General Surgeon and Surgical Endoscopist and as the Clinical Skills Director associated with the University of Otago.

Sarah is an academic surgeon with a passion for medical education. In addition to medical education, her research interests include leadership development, academic misconduct and clinical skills acquisition. She studied Medicine in the UK and completed a basic surgical training rotation, whilst researching academic misconduct amongst medical students.

Sarah was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to complete a PhD in Surgical Education, looking at surgical decision making at Otago University. She is currently researching medical student academic misconduct in Scotland and New Zealand; surgical careers decisions of medical students and their influences. She is supervising HEDC 502 students projects on Burnout and resilience in medicine and a surgical trainee completing a research project on surgical leadership development.

Sarah’s depth of experience in clinical education is matched by her research interests dealing with important aspects of well-being across the continuum of medical training.  We welcome Sarah’s expertise and contribution to the FoHPE Board.

Tony Egan, a stalwart of ANZAHPE and previous editor of the ANZAHPE Bulletin for six years died on 5 September 2021.  

Tony received the ANZAHPE Award 2012 and was awarded life membership in 2018. He attended his first ANZAME (as it was then) conference in 1989 and regularly attended thereafter.  He joined the committee of management in 2000.  He was editor of Focus on Health Professional Education from 2007 to 2015.

He grew up in the north of England but spent most of his life in or near Dunedin, New Zealand.  He registered as a Psychologist in 1975 and worked for the University of Otago. His work for the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners was recognised by them awarding him an Honorary Fellowship in 2003.

He was the person that encouraged new ANZAHPE members, in particular those who were first time presenters, by attending their presentations and actively seeking them out over tea breaks.  He was notable for nurturing Otago students to undertake projects about education and submit them for the student awards.  The spontaneous waiata sung by his Aotearoa colleagues, at the time he was awarded ANZAHPE life fellowship, moved him (and many others).

For me, Tony always made you think.  He maintained a focus on the student and patient experience.  He was always keen to implement innovations that brought long lasting change. He questioned current practice, listened thoughtfully and brought perspectives that others hadn’t considered.  You would always want him in a group.

An obituary will also be published in FoHPE.  Please send me any memories you have of Tony that you think would be nice to include.

Tim Wilkinson
(tim.wilkinson@otago.ac.nz)

Rufus was a long-standing member of ANZAHPE.  On a personal reflection, when I first met him, a long time ago, as a very young and junior member in the 1990's, I recall being both intrigued and intimidated in equal parts.  He was so clever, so insightful, and did not suffer fools gladly - that was daunting - but he was also funny, welcoming, experienced, and so knowledgeable.  In the 2000's I gathered the courage to ask him to mentor me, to help me to apply for promotions.  He was generous with his time and his advice - though again I was daunted by his amazing grasp of the English language and his excellent grammar and vocabulary (I tend to be a little more laissez faire, and must confess, I did not always understand all the words he used).  I worked alongside Rufus on the Editorial Board of FoHPE - he was on the Board from 2009-2018, and he was a true asset, writing reviews, always at the forefront with conference planning and contributions and attendance.

Rufus will be deeply missed by many of us, personally, and also, his loss is a loss to the Association.  We are richer and better for having had him amongst us.

Anna Chur-Hansen

A/Prof Jo Bishop - ANZAHPE President

Dear Members,

I welcome you as the newly elected president of ANZAHPE following the Annual General Meeting held in August.

I joined Bond University 8 years ago this month with my family for a 3-year adventure, we are now Australian citizens! I am the curriculum lead for the medical program and the Dean of students for the health faculty. 

The first Australian conference I attended and presented was in fact the 2014 ANZAHPE conference “Developing Health Professional Educators: Connecting Science and Theory with Learning for Clinical Practice” held on the Gold Coast. It was the first time I heard of PeArLS and quickly realised the wealth of collegiality within this Community of Practice. We can all agree that what ever format, in person or online, the PeArLS is staple of our organisation. During this year’s festival, my colleagues and I from Bond utilsed this format to ask Mentor, Coach, Personal tutor, advisor? You decide! We have formed collaborations with colleagues nationally and will be rolling out a revised program based on evidence next month – thank you!

Other memories from the conference was that the Translink Tram service had not been completed on time and that the conference dinner was at SeaWorld where we were greeted by a Hollywood star during our meal ….. the sea lion from Nim’s Island, was it Friday or Spud?

I would like to acknowledge and thank Professor Ben Canny who supported the Committee of Management (CoM) as the president and convened the 2021 Festival. In true homage to Ben who values a quote, here is one from Harvey Mackay “None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone's help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.” 

I would like to introduce you to your CoM and their portfolio. For a full overview please read here and please contact anyone of us if you have any questions or suggestions.

We are pleased to announce that next year’s festival will be themed around ‘Partnerships’. Along with celebrating our partnerships with Health Professional Education the opening to the ANZAHPE Festival will include a special 50th anniversary simultaneous celebration, at local hubs around Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

This event will be held on Friday 8 July, so please reserve the date in your calendar! The remainder of the festival will take place over 3 days: Monday 11^th, Wednesday 13^th and Tuesday 19^th, using an online platform

Feedback from the 2021 Festival indicated that while we need to be cautious about interstate and international travel, attendees appreciate the networking and social opportunities usually provided at ANZAHPE events.  Therefore, sometime on Friday July 8^th (it will be later in the day for our NZ colleagues, and earlier for those in Perth) we invite you all to attend – in person – the official opening of the festival. Following the official address, attendees will be able to participate in local networking. More information will be circulated with the launch of our festival website.

Sinead Kado  BSc Psychology; MBBS; Dip O&G; MHPE (Dist)

I have worked for 20 years in Fiji first in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, then tutoring medical students through problem based learning before becoming the year 1-3 coordinator at the Fiji School of Medicine. A consortium of academics from Australia and New Zealand ran the Graduate Certificate in Medical Education for Fiji in 2013, many of whom contribute substantially to ANZAHPE. Through their mentorship and encouragement I further developed my interest in health professions education (HPE) and alongside Louise Young and Linda Sweet developed a medical education workshop for the Pacific. I was then awarded an Australian Awards scholarship to undertake a Masters in HPE at UWA where I began to research the impact of faculty development workshops on educational practice. Subsequently I was successful in being awarded a scholarship to continue in my studies. I am currently undertaking a PhD investigating HPE leadership in the Pacific within an interpretivist framework. My passion is to further develop HPE in the Pacific.

I joined the ANZAHPE fellowship scheme after encouragement from my mentors in ANZAHPE. I feel privileged to be part of the ANZAHPE family and hope that I can further build the networks between Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. I continue to be mentored and I look forward to mentoring others as they begin their HPE journey especially in the Pacific.