University News

A Ministerial Statement was made in Parliament this August about the role of the Road Safety Council Chair and Professor D'Arcy Holman's honorary appointment. 

UWA researchers have been investigating the link between schizophrenia and criminal offending in a bid to provide data to counter or temper popular misconceptions.

A routine clinical system for monitoring cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in mental health patients is being developed with a view to reducing their high risk.

The wife of Faculty dental graduate Dr Gary Hewett, who was honoured with an OAM this year for his work with the charity Awareness Cambodia, occasionally reminds him of a couple of things.

The inaugural recipient of the WIRF BMedSc scholarship in honour of Professor Gordon King is undertaking research into pre-term birth at King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women.

Professor Gordon King made significant medical and personal contributions in five major world arenas, namely the United Kingdom, China, Hong Kong, Australia and Africa.

Painting a verbal picture of post-Soviet health care in Tajikistan has earned medical student John van Bockxmeer the Alan Charters Elective Prize for 2009.

Quoted As Saying

The West Australian

Winthrop Professor David Mackey, the new Managing Director of the Lions Eye Institute, is QAS both environmental and genetic factors appear to play a role in short and long sightedness. He was commenting on NSW research which found the amount of time spent outdoors protected people from becoming short-sighted.“So if someone is inside studying all the time then they won’t spend much time outdoors, so if we can identify children who might be at risk of that happening, we might be able to intervene and suggest that Johnny might need to be sent outside more often,” Professor Mackey said.

As part of her 6th year medical elective, Priscilla Tan visited the remote and rural parts of Palawan, in the Philippines, with four other UWA medical students. They were taken under the wing of Dr Editha Miguel and her organisation, Agape Rural (Health) Project (ARP). Ms Tan recounts how the Local and International Needs Contribution Scheme (LINCS) greatly aided in supplying equipment, resources and support to the needy area.

The Oral Health Centre of Western Australia (OHCWA) is being asked by the Australian Dental Council to host an increasing number of exams for overseas trained dentists, due largely to their top facilities and staff.

High school students from outer suburbs who aspire to become doctors will have the chance to be given a financial helping hand from a new array of Faculty scholarships established through bequests.

Due largely to the vision of Sir John Winthrop Hackett, the University of Western Australia (UWA) was established as the State’s first University in 1911. It was established as “A university for all”, promoting equal access to tertiary education for all social classes.

When a group of Health Science students and staff turned up at the local school in a remote village in India, they didn’t muck around.

WA’s first formal mentoring program for surgical trainees is being launched this month.

In a bid to prevent mental health patients from falling through cracks in the health care system, a new unit was established last year to improve the coordination of mental and physical care.

A project ensuring that patients who present to emergency departments with deliberate self-harm receive rapid follow-up care was launched last month.

Rural health care needs more support and incentives to make it a more attractive career option for health care graduates, according to a final year Podiatry student.

A team of volunteer healthcare workers from Australia ventured into one of the most dangerous zones of South Africa last September to treat and help the poor and homeless. They stayed in an AIDS hospice in Johannesburg and were not allowed outside the razor-wired compound without the protection of local staff.

Four registered nurses are pursuing PhD studies this year through the School of Population Health, with the help of substantial external scholarships.

Quoted As Saying

The West Australian:

The Health Science Alumni (HSA) hopes to set up a career mentor scheme as part of its scope of activities.

A group of students in the School of Dentistry who won a prestigious national prize for research are part of a new generation of dental students making important findings that are being widely aired.

Research ranging from new spinal devices to an artificial eardrum was showcased in the School of Surgery’s recent research symposium.

Flipping hamburgers to pay the rent and stock the fridge, to the detriment of their studies, will hopefully be a thing of the past for some dental students, thanks to an Assistance Fund being financed generously by the Western Australian Dental Foundation.

The pilot of the Outer Metropolitan Program in three high schools last year proved a resounding success, with one-third of interested students being offered places to study medicine this year.

Graduates from a diverse range of disciplines who have had a change of heart and would now like to pursue a career in nursing are lining up to register interest in a brand new UWA course that will give them a Masters degree.

Research into Alzheimer’s disease has received a fillip from two UWA benefactors who say they are at the age when the problem is rife.

A conference initiated by UWA medical students to showcase undergraduate health research has proven so successful in its second year that it could become a national event.

The notion of the general practice rooms being a research laboratory is beginning to be recognised, especially in the Eastern States.

A sixth-year medical student who won an award for his outstanding efforts as a volunteer mentor to other medical students hopes to continue to support students during his years as a hospital doctor.

Health professionals will have the chance to brush up on the emergency management of dental and facial trauma in the sporting arena at a congress in Perth next year.

Quoted As Saying

The West Australian:

An international expert on immunology and transplant matching is a believer in getting an early taste of medical research before the demands of work and family make it trickier.

Professor Terry Nolan, Foundation Head of the University of Melbourne School of Population Health, says the Bachelor of Medicine Science degree was profoundly life-changing.

A staff development program for clinical teachers in medicine has been so popular that it has been expanded and rolled out to other health professionals.

See related article

An unusual partnership between a group of surgeons and engineers at UWA is showing promising results that could change the way cancer is detected.

The winner of a rural award for medical students will head to the UK next year to examine why rural cancer patients have poorer survival rates than their urban counterparts.

A Centre of Excellence in Indigenous Medical Education is being mooted for UWA.

Season’s greetings to all our readers. As 2008 draws to an end it is appropriate to reflect on some of the achievements of another demanding year.

Regenerative medicine is a new buzzword in biomedical research and describes an emerging area of medicine, according to a leading Faculty investigator.

A student exchange program with China is proving popular, with UWA fifth-year medical students choosing to do elective placements of six weeks at a major hospital in Nanjing after winning scholarships

In a bid to help redress the health inequities for people with mental illness in WA, the HealthRight project, jointly partnered by the Faculty, has been successfully encouraging this group to visit th