NewMeds offers clinical placements across Australia, providing aspiring healthcare professionals with hands-on experience in diverse medical environments. From urban hospitals to remote rural clinics, these placements equip students with practical skills and a deeper understanding of healthcare delivery in varied settings.
Participants work alongside experienced practitioners, fostering professional growth and enhancing their ability to address the unique challenges of Australia’s healthcare system. NewMeds placements ensure students are well-prepared to make a meaningful impact in their future medical careers.
We are a truly virtual campus! Our academic staff are all around Australia just like our students will be. We have an administrative hub in Brisbane CBD.
The NewMed program allows our students to remain living in their communities without uprooting their families and wider connections just to study medicine. Our course has been designed from the start to have fit-for-purpose virtual delivery and is based on the latest best evidence in medical education. We are also primary care focussed, with over 200 days scheduled in general practice before students even set foot in a hospital. This mirrors the reality that the vast majority of healthcare in Australia is delivered in primary care and not in hospital settings.
One good thing to come out of Covid-19 is that we can answer this question with a resounding: “yes, and there are studies to prove it”! Like any form of education, you need to pick the pedagogy to match the learning, and we are mindful that some skills need in-person, experienced clinical teachers to oversee (particularly in early stages of learning). We will have face to face skills intensives where this will take place. Additionally, our GP supervisors will be supported to facilitate student learning in many necessary skills during their longitudinal placements. Remember they will have over 200 days in general practice plus a whole year in a hospital setting. So, by combining our virtual campus, skills intensives and clinical immersion in the NewMed hybrid model – we believe their clinical skills will be excellent!
We are training medical students in a graduate course. Unlike most other medical schools we are placing our students with GPs for the first three years of their training. This is not going to qualify them to be GPs themselves – they will still need further (postgraduate) training for that – but it will give them a deep understanding of the work GPs do. They will be trained in a hospital setting for their fourth and final year to ensure ample exposure to critical care and subspecialty topics as well as to ensure they are well-prepared for their internship and future progression into any medical specialty.
Anyone with teenagers will tell you that many students already live their lives online – even if the person they are speaking with is physically sitting in the room next door! However, we are not going to rely on these inherent skills, we are actively designing our program to develop a strong social network amongst our students and their educators. We have been influenced by Lave and Wengers’ theories on “Communities of Practice”, and look forward to making this a stand-out feature of our course. Our students, and their supervisors, will belong to an intentional community of practice, where they will become well known to each other.
Our GP supervisors will need to be vocationally registered and working in accredited practices. Beyond that, what we will be looking for is enthusiasm, a willingness to learn how to teach, and great communication. Prior experience of supervising (students or registrars) will be helpful but not essential. We will have a series of supportive learning sessions for our supervisors so you will know what you can expect of students, and how to be a helpful part of their learning journey.
As a supervisor, your expertise will be invaluable in helping identify students who need extra support. NewMed has a clear process to help with students who are struggling. We take a programmatic approach to assessment, which means we don’t rely on just a handful of “high stakes” exams to decide if someone is fit to practice. Our supervisors will never be asked to ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ students, but their voices will be an integral part of the overall student learning journey. Both supervisors and students will be listened to and supported to try to achieve helpful outcomes for all involved.
Yes, this is something we will encourage (within reason), as inter-professional collaboration is a key graduate outcome for our students. In fact, if students are placed in practices without easy access to Allied Health Provider input, this is something NewMed will actively arrange for them.