New facilities to deliver complete MD program in Dubbo

Following the receipt of funding from the Federal Government’s Murray Darling Medical Schools’ Network, the Sydney Medical School will be able to deliver the entire Doctor of Medicine degree at the Dubbo campus in a brand new, world-class facility starting in 2022.

The new building is expected to begin construction in early 2021, and will include state-of-the-art anatomy labs, learning studios, a fully equipped clinical simulation centre, and breakout spaces for student collaboration. It will be positioned at the southern end of the site alongside the existing teaching and administration blocks and student accommodation.

Up until now, students have had to travel to Sydney in order to undertake a medicine degree at the University of Sydney, whilst having the option of visiting the School of Rural Health in Orange or Dubbo in their penultimate or final year for a placement program.

This new facility will provide better access to medical studies to rural students, as well as improving the experience and education outcomes of main campus students when on their rural placements.

A launch event for the commencement of the building works is to be held on Monday 14 December 2020 at the Dubbo campus. It will be attended by representatives of a variety of stakeholders, including:

• Hon. Mark Coulton MP
• Mr Mark Spittal, Acting CEO of the Western NSW Local Health District
• Professor Cheryl Jones, Head of School and Dean of the Sydney Medical School
• Associate Professor Mark Arnold, Head of Clinical School, School of Rural Health
• Professor Sarah Young, Head of School, School of Medical Sciences
• Professor Inam Haq, Associate Dean, Education in the Faculty of Medicine and Health

The event will include the announcement of the building contractor and important local cultural rituals – among these, a Welcome to Country and a traditional Indigenous smoking ceremony.

The Dubbo program and new facilities are being developed in close collaboration with the Western NSW Local Health District, the hospitals and doctors of the region, and the Dubbo community, including the Wiradjuri community, which has been generous with support and input.

This event will be live streamed between 10.30-11.30am on Monday 14th of December. Join this event virtually via this zoom link: https://bit.ly/srh-build

The School of Rural Health is part of a network of Australian rural clinical schools whose aim is to increase the number of medical professionals living and working in rural and remote Australia. One of the goals of their program is to support rural health professionals to improve health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and rural communities in general.

The school would like to incorporate local Aboriginal artwork into a range of printed and digital mediums that provides a visual representation of our organisation, our values and our story.

A contest is currently being run for a local Wiradjuri artist to create artwork for the new facilities. The school will commission a suite of three artworks from the chosen artist, to be used in marketing/promotional materials, documents, signage and social media.

The key themes that should be considered in the design are:

• medicine, healing, health and wellbeing
• teaching and learning
• communities.

Learn more about the contest here.