Education - Corpus

First on the scene: the Westdene Dam bus disaster

10 April 2017 5 Comments

Dr Jill McIlraith

As a fifth year medical student at University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, I was one of the first on the scene when a double-decker bus carrying 72 high school students went off the causeway of a small suburban dam in March 1985. 42 children drowned that afternoon.

I lived opposite the Westdene Dam and was at home that Wednesday afternoon, having been up late the night before doing my emergency medicine attachment at Johannesburg Hospital’s Casualty Department. Hearing a woman yelling for help, I went outside to see a handful of people in the water, some clambering onto the just-submerged roof of a bus.

Emily Siedeberg, New Zealand’s first woman doctor

3 April 2017 Leave a Comment

Barbara Brookes

The question of the propriety of teaching women medical students first came before the medical staff at Dunedin hospital in 1891. If the decision had been left to them, Emily Siedeberg, New Zealand’s first woman doctor, might well have not been able to pursue her chosen field. Having been admitted to study medicine at the University of Otago, Emily Siedeberg wrote to the Trustees of the hospital to enquire if there was any objection to her attending the hospital as a medical student. The trustees canvassed the opinions of the hospital staff who sent their responses in writing.

Reflections from the Medical School graduating class of 1971.

20 March 2017 2 Comments

Charlotte Paul and Sarah Romans

You young women are taking the place of a man.”

Click here to view full size 1968 class photo

In 1971, seventeen women were among the 120 graduates in medicine at the University of Otago. 44 years later, fifteen of the sixteen who were still alive wrote brief life stories, and in November 2015 fourteen of us met for a three day reunion. The naysayers were wrong: we had all practised medicine for many years, with just one giving up after thirty years to pursue other interests, and none of us regretted having chosen a medical career. Three had retired in the last few years but the rest were still practising, aged 67 or older. What follows are insights gleaned from this group of women, as we reflected on the time before we started university, our time together at Medical School, and our lives as medical practitioners. We also reflected on the process of meeting again, nearly fifty years after entering Medical School, and we now offer some insights to our successors, the women studying medicine today.

Attentive curiosity: a methodology of presence.

20 March 2017 Leave a Comment

Philippa Ranby

Sustained engagements and entanglements with the activities of massage therapy, counselling, arts therapy and teaching have taught me a lot about the potency of presence in the phenomena of healing, learning, creativity and renewal. There’s a particular quality of presence – both of a person and a process of encounter – that makes a difference. Such a presence, in my experience, is a mediation of a number of influences and practices, one of them being attentive curiosity. Attentive curiosity could be considered a methodology of presence.

Johann Remmelin: a story of a 17th century anatomy flap book

6 March 2017 2 Comments

Dr Katherine Hall

In 1613, Johann Remmelin (1583-1632) published the first edition of his anatomy flap book. A 1667 edition, printed from the same printer blocks as the first, is held in the Health Sciences Library at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Recently, with colleagues Dr Simone Marshall and K. John Dennison, I had the opportunity to study it closely.

Our cadaver is male…

6 February 2017 Leave a Comment

Isabelle Lomax-Sawyers

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. Rembrandt, 1632. — *The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp*. Rembrandt, 1632.

Our cadaver is male. He was old when he died. I don’t remember his face.

There are maybe ten of us in our white coats. We crowd around the table where he lies in an open black body bag, his head resting on a block of wood. We drape a paper towel over his genitals. We have seen human remains before, single limbs unpeeled to varying degrees. He is whole. He is the first one that is ours.

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