News and Events

Innovations in medical education in the 21st century
Professor Keith Lindor

Dean, Mayo Medical School, Minnesota, USA

The David Maddison Lecture commemorates the contributions of Professor David Maddison, the Foundation Dean of Medicine of the Newcastle Medical School. David was a remarkable person who had the vision for a new and radical approach to medical education and the leadership to achieve that vision. Sadly he died in 1981 before the first cohort of Newcastle medical students graduated (1983).

Professor Keith Lindor currently serves as Dean of the Mayo Medical School and is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. He led the recent curriculum review at Mayo Medical School with the aim of adjusting medical education to the advancing medical landscape.

Professor Lindor's interests include cholestatic liver diseases in adults, particularly primary biliary cirrhosis and primary sclerosing cholangitis as well as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. The focus of his research work is primarily on clinical trials and means of optimizing the medical management of patients with these disorders.

Professor Lindor currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Hepatology and has previously served as Senior Associate Editor for Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He also serves on the editorial board of Gastroenterology and Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology. He has served on numerous committees for the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease and also the American Liver Foundation.

A Silver Jubilee for Medicine at Walter Sisulu University

In the early 1990s the then Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Faculty of Nursing shared a Partnership Initiative with Transkei University, now Walter Sisulu University in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Led jointly by the then Dean, Professor Lizo Mazwai and myself, we exchanged staff and shared experience with problem based learning, Transkei being the first to introduce this to South Africa. We learnt from their extensive community experience.

Five years ago the University was renamed Walter Sisulu University and the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital was built. WSU now has an expanded role as a Developmental University to work with all sectors of the Eastern Cape to support community development in rural areas.

The central aim of the school was and remains to educate black students especially from the extensive and underprivileged rural communities. The Province is now served widely by WSU graduates; patients and doctors speak the same language, Xhosa.

On October 8th and 9th 2010 the Medical School celebrated its Silver Jubilee, interlinked with a Global Consensus Conference in Social Accountability in Health Professional Education. I was kindly invited as a guest. The now Dean, Professor Khaya Mfenyana, a prominent leader of the initiative for social accountability expressed deep appreciation for the support that Newcastle has provided over many years.

Prof. John Hamilton

Looking for PhD students?

The Research Higher Degree and Study Abroad Programs, International Division at the University of Newcastle have established relationships with several universities in the Asia region. If researchers have PhD projects for which they are seeking students, International Division will forward details to contacts within these Universities and they will promote these to students. Details of interested students will then be passed on to the researcher for consideration. Any interested staff should provide a one page summary of their project to Andrea Nolan smph-research@newcastle.edu.au