Medicine and surgery
The aim of teaching in the sixth and final year of the course is to consolidate existing core knowledge and clinical skills and provide further coordinated teaching in a range of areas important to medical practice. This will provide graduates with an appropriate level of self motivation and competence for intern training and enable pursuit of postgraduate pathways equally comfortably in specialty or community (including rural) fields of medical practice. Further emphasis is placed on communication skills and the development of appropriate attitudes to medical practice as well as achieving competence in practical skills. Patient-centred small-group teaching forms the basis of much of the instruction in final year, this being supplemented with large-group multidisciplinary, lecture-seminar teaching sessions throughout the year. Rotating six-week blocks of teaching utilise a range of hospitals during the thirty-six teaching weeks in the year. These include the major, highly specialised city teaching hospitals, intermediate metropolitan hospitals and country hospitals. Public as well as private hospitals are associated with this part of the university program and include Monash Medical Centre (Clayton and Moorabbin), the Alfred group of hospitals (Alfred and Caulfield General Medical Centre), Box Hill Hospital, Dandenong, Maroondah, Mornington Peninsula Hospital (Frankston), Cabrini, Epworth Hospital, Latrobe Regional Hospital (Moe and Traralgon) and West Gippsland Hospital (Warragul). As well as general medical and surgical teaching, there is significant input from sub-specialty areas in medicine and surgery. Exposure to the practice of medicine in a rural setting forms an important part of the medical and surgical as well as community medicine rotations. Students live in respective rural areas for two or three weeks at a time, as part of this program. Three-week student internships are undertaken in selected medical and surgical units in the major teaching hospitals. Individually, students become an integral part of the patient-care team for this period, functioning as much as possible as assistant interns. Further opportunity is thereby provided for students to develop communication, patient management and practical clinical skills during this time. Both the Monash Medical Centre and Alfred Hospital student groups come together during their respective six-week teaching blocks for six half-day sessions in each of geriatric medicine, rehabilitation medicine, forensic medicine and social and preventive medicine. This program is spread across a number of centres to allow for small-group bedside teaching as well as discussions and seminars in these areas. Prior teaching in these areas is collated and focused at a level commensurate with the clinical maturity of these students. Additional palliative-care teaching is also part of the community medicine six-week rotation. All students at each campus are together for a series of multidisciplinary seminars on Friday afternoons throughout the year. Formal therapeutics teaching forms an important part of this series of seminars. Finally, the total body of sixth-year students has the opportunity of coming together for an optional lecture series which takes place on Saturday mornings. Subject areas include rheumatology, orthopaedics, dermatology, and obstetrics and gynaecology.
Prescribed texts (Medicine)
As listed for fifth year plus the following medical subspecialty references:
Braunwald E (ed.) Heart disease: A textbook of cardiovascular medicine 4th edn, Saunders, 1992
Brenner B M and Selwyn A The kidney in health and disease Blackwell Scientific, 1984
Champion R H and others Textbook of dermatology 4 vols, 5th edn, Blackwell Scientific, 1992
de Vita V T and Hellman S Cancer: Principles and practice of oncology 3rd edn, Lippincott, 1989
Firkin F and others (eds) de Gruchy's `Clinical haematology in medical practice' 5th edn, Blackwell Scientific, 1989
McCarty D J (ed.) Arthritis and allied conditions 11th edn, Lea and Febiger, 1989
Seaton A and others (eds) Crofton and Douglas's `Respiratory diseases' 4th edn, Blackwell Scientific, 1989
Sherlock S Diseases of the liver and biliary system 7th edn, Blackwell Scientific, 1985
Sleisenger M H and Fordtran J S (eds) Gastrointestinal disease, pathophysiology, diagnosis and management 2 vols, 4th edn, Saunders, 1989
Wahlqvist M (ed.) Food and nutrition in Australia 3rd edn, Nelson, 1988
Walton J N (ed.) Brain's `Diseases of the nervous system' 9th edn, OUP, 1985
Williams R H (ed.) Textbook of endocrinology 7th edn, Saunders, 1985
and regular reading of one (or more) of the following journals:
The Medical Journal of Australia
The New England Journal of Medicine
The Lancet
The British Medical Journal
Prescribed texts (Surgery)
As listed for fourth and fifth year