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Monash medicine 40 years of nurturing

When immunologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet opened Monash University's medical school in April 1963, he noted that the aim of medicine should be to provide the "fullness of health" to individuals and the community. Today, as the medical faculty approaches its 40th birthday, those ideals remain at its core. PENNY FANNIN reports.

There's some poignancy in the knowledge that Monash University's medical school, charged with the responsibility of finding treatments for the sick, was built on a site formerly housing an epileptic colony.

As Professor John Murtagh, a member of the medical school's first graduating class, remembers it, the colony had been set up as a farm with sheds and small farmhouses scattered about. The office of the school's founding dean, Professor Rod Andrew, was an old shed.

"Life for the students began in temporary buildings," recalls Professor Murtagh, now an adjunct professor to the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

"The Department of Anatomy teaching facility was in the original science block. The dissection room was very hot and filled with cadavers - some of the students used to faint."

Although the first medical students started in 1961, the school wasn't opened until 1963.

At the opening, Sir Macfarlane Burnet said: "A new medical school, if it is to be worthy of the second half of the 20th century, must be a centre for the intellectual comprehension of medicine in its threefold form - as a part of the biological sciences, as a healing and compassionate art and as the guardian of personal and community health."

The first clinical professors who came in 1962 to teach at Monash could not have foreseen Sir Macfarlane's words, but they soon embraced this philosophy.

"They brought with them new techniques and taught us to be lateral thinkers. They encouraged us to speak up, to argue and to question," Professor Murtagh says.

The medical school's focus on improving patient care and teaching students to question has continued over the decades. The medical course now has a stream centred on the personal and professional development of students.

The course places a strong emphasis on clinical communication skills, with students placed in medical practices, community care facilities and hospitals from an early stage.

A distinct feature of the Monash program is that all students spend a significant amount of time in rural areas.

From next year, second-year medical students will undertake voluntary work with four community service organisations under a new Community Partnerships Program. The program, the first of its kind in Australia, will see students working on projects at Anglicare, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne Citymission and Wesley Mission Melbourne.

Faculty dean Professor Nick Saunders says it is important for modern medical courses to address issues of social justice.

"When I was a medical student, we had no exposure to these ideas," he says. "It is now important that they are a part of medical education because doctors are confronted with these issues every day in their practices.

"Getting students out there to help provide services in the community will allow them to realise that there are people from many walks of life who need care and advocacy. It will give students a good idea of what the agencies do and what their clients need, and it will emphasise that it is not only the disadvantaged and marginalised who turn to the agencies and the medical profession for support."

The faculty's focus on broadening the knowledge of its students has reflected its own experience of becoming more multidisciplinary.

Over the past decade, the faculty has introduced bachelors degrees in nursing, radiography and medical imaging, biomedical science, nutrition and dietetics, and ambulance and paramedic studies. In 2002, the departments of Social Work and Psychology joined the faculty.

"We are now a faculty of health services," Professor Saunders says. "We have always been a medical school that interacts strongly with the Faculty of Science, and in the last decade we have taken on nursing and developed our own bachelor courses. Now, with social work and psychology, we're reinforcing that we're a multidisciplinary faculty with a focus on clinical practice."

Medicine at Monash: a short history

1960: Foundation dean, Professor Rod Andrew, appointed.

1961: Building work begins on the Faculty of Medicine and faculty classes begin.

1963: Sir Macfarlane Burnet opens Clayton campus buildings.

1964: First groups of Monash medical students enter teaching hospitals - Prince Henry's and The Alfred.

1965: Professor Carl Wood appointed as head of obstetrics and gynaecology.

1966: First Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MB BS) students graduate from Monash.

1980s: Professor Carl Wood pioneers IVF technology.

1990: Monash Medical Centre opens after Prince Henry's and the Queen Victoria hospitals are closed.

1990: Institute of Reproduction and Development opens at Monash Medical Centre and becomes the hub of Australian reproductive medicine.

1996: Centre for Radiography and Medical Imaging established.

2001: Faculty of Medicine reorganised into schools and renamed the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. The faculty has about 5000 students.

2002: Funding for National Stem Cell Centre approved.

Action box For further information on the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, visit www.med.monash.edu.au.

Fortieth anniversary celebrations will include gala events for each alumni group, symposiums and local and overseas conferences. For more information, contact Ms Janine Barrett on + 61 3 9905 5971 or email janine.barrett@med.monash.edu.au.

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