ANU Medical School

ANU Medical School - Peter Baume Building

The Australian National University Medical School (ANUMS) received the Australian Medical Council’s accreditation for the MBBS program in November 2003. Under the leadership of the Foundation Dean, Professor Paul Gatenby, the first cohort of students commenced in February 2004.

History of the Medical School

Walter Burley Griffin’s plan for the design of Canberra not only designated Acton peninsula as a hospital site, but did so whilst simultaneously placing it adjacent to a university where he envisaged a medical school would be located. One of the best extant sources of evidence of the geometry and intent of Walter Burley Griffin’s formally adopted plan for Canberra, is set out in the Report of Federal Capital City Designs of the Board of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia (1912). The following exerpts are taken from pages 18 and 19 of that report.

“Black Mountain rising almost directly out of the waters at the Western end of the “Water Axis,” is set off from the formal pool by the University and surrounding Professional schools…it will be noted that fundamental sciences, descriptive of nature lead directly to the theoretical sciences dependent on them…Some such arrangement is necessary to permit proper expansion in these changing fields, with convenience to students. Moreover it is endeavoured to direct these lines on the site to such fields for actual application as are more available to them…Thus from Physiology and Gymnasia open onto the broad flat athletic grounds and the water areas and the Hospital, of itself in a most suitable isolated location with equable temperature and atmospheric conditions is adjoined by the Medical, Surgical, Pharmaceutic schools."

The Canberra Community Hospital on Acton peninsula (which was later named the Royal Canberra Hospital ) had possessed a Department of Clinical Science since 1965, its foundation professor being Malcolm Whyte and its laboratories being linked to the Australian National University's (ANU) John Curtin School of Medical Research. Amongst others, Dr Marcus de Laune Faunce advocated that the Royal Canberra Hospital be linked with a medical school at the ANU.

In the early 1970s the ANU narrowly missed out on a medical school, which went to the University of Newcastle. The 1980s had seen an involvement in the teaching of a small cohort of final-year students from the University of Queensland in Canberra, and in 1993 the University of Sydney began to develop its Canberra Clinical School.

In April 2001, after intense public debate and a committee of inquiry lasting eight months, the announcement that the Australian National University (ANU) was to develop Australia's 12th and the world's 896th medical school.

Structure of the Medical School

The first enrolment was in 2004. The ANUMS program is a four year graduate medical degree, being thematic in concept and which uses problem based learning as the principal method of instruction particularly in the first two years.

The themes include:

Medical Sciences Clinical Skills Population Health Professionalism and Leadership

These themes were selected as being important knowledge and professional domains that medical graduates will need in the 21st century. Doctors require competency in basic medical sciences such as anatomy and physiology as well as defined clinical skills, this includes communicating with patients and their relatives, being able to elicit a history, examine a patient and use the principles of evidence based practice. Population health grows in importance as the world’s population grows; doctors must appreciate there is perspective different from their individual patients and that great health gains are really only made at the population level. Finally, we recognise that doctors require an understanding of health law medical ethics and international human rights as well as an ability to reflect on their own performance and capacity.

Teaching is on the ANU campus, particularly in the first two years. Patient contact is from early in the course with much of the last two years taught in the health sector, both in the ACT and in surrounding NSW. In the ACT the principle teaching hospital is The Canberra Hospital, students will also go to Calvary Hospital, to facilities of ACT Community Care and selected general practices. In surrounding NSW we have established a Rural Clinical School. A select group of students will be invited to spend the third year of the course in a rural curriculum that will run parallel to the urban based curriculum.

The ANU Medical School has links with the ACT Department of Health and Community Care and the Southern Area Health Service of the NSW Health system. Canberra, the "bush capital", is very close to the small population centres of south-eastern NSW. The School takes advantage of the diversity of the surrounding area and provides rural experience from very early in the course in locations such as Yass, New South Wales, Queanbeyan, Bega, Batemans Bay, Goulburn and Cooma, all of which are within a few hour's travelling distance of Canberra, as well as Young, NSW. Students have the opportunity to spend one of their clinical years in a rural setting, learning medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology synchronously while their urban colleagues rotate through traditional blocs.

External Links

ANUMS Goals and Strategies http://medicalschool.anu.edu.au/?IntCatId=14&IntContId=7533&IntContContId=7530 (last accessed 20 July 2009)