Education Centre to bring doctors and nurses together
Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
A new Education Centre at Sydney Adventist Hospital will enhance interdisciplinary learning, bringing medical and nursing students from public and private educational institutions together.
Erin Raethel, Ray Roennfeldt and Paul Race with federal and state health ministers Tanya Plibersek and Jillian Skinner.
The training model will provide side-by-side clinical placements for medical students from The University of Sydney’s Sydney Adventist Hospital Clinical School, nursing students from Avondale College of Higher Education and other allied health students. This will “not only improve their understanding of different roles and increase the likelihood of them developing a strong sense of team, but also make it easier for us to work more collaboratively with our colleagues in medical and allied health,” says Dr Paul Race, dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Health at Avondale.
Federal health minister Tanya Plibersek described the model as “the way of the future” in her speech during the groundbreaking of the $17-million centre, June 7. Ms Plibersek attended the groundbreaking with New South Wales state colleague Jillian Skinner and local federal and state members Paul Fletcher and Barry O’Farrell, who is also the premier.
Avondale nursing student Erin Raethel also spoke of how interdisciplinary learning might redress perceptions of inequality among medical and nursing students. “Disease is not concerned with status,” she said, “and neither should the provision of health care.”
President Dr Ray Roennfeldt invited attendees to “imagine the potential of a partnership between a private hospital that models Christianity in action, a university that focuses on the power of the mind and a private higher education provider inspiring its students with a greater vision of world needs.”
The hospital is building stage one of the centre, a three-level, 3500-square metre facility, with funding from the Australian and New South Wales governments.
The former is through the Clinical Training Funding Program of Health WorkForce Australia (HWA). It totals $11.83 million, including $10 million as a capital grant, the largest awarded by the government through HWA to the private sector.
The latter is through the New South Wales Ministry of Health. It totals $10 million, which the hospital is using to build the centre, train medical interns and contract health services.
The centre includes, among other things, two auditoriums, a library and a simulation centre. It will feature innovative and purpose-built furniture and information and technology services that maximise information sharing, inter-disciplinary teaching, inter-institution document access and learning. Plans are to open the centre in June next year.