AMSA Convention Melbourne 08

So, for those of you who don't know, I signed up for the Australian Med Students Association's annual convention. This year I headed to Melb on my bday for an event I didn't really know to much about - other than ifyou get a spot (rego fills up fast), you must go! Rego is short for registration, Aussies shorten any word they possibly can. They can even make up new short forms on the go and the rest of the people listening don't miss a beat, yet I'm baffled. So the convention combines both academic and social components and is a massive task to organize. It's the largest med students conference in the southern hemisphere. The one week has a million dollar budget, fully supported by the AMA, the Gov, etc. They brought in a ton of very cool speakers. For example, it was kicked off by the governor of Victoria - a former doc himself. He gave a welcome and motivational speech. Other speakers gave talks on patient centered approaches to weight loss, preimplantation genetics, leading techniques in medical imaging, wound management, HIV/AIDS, euthanasia debate anda bunch of others. I'm going to describe a few of my favs. Not those but they were also good. All the things you learned were not essential to passing the medicine course but fascinating to learn about.

Obviously I was going to like this one: They had a six person panel consisting of a current top Aussie rules football player, former olympic gold medalist in swimming and former aussie cricketer, two sports med docs and one surgeon. Basically they talked about medicine in sports from both sides. What athletes will do to play, what docs will or won't hlep them with, etc. Interesting debate/discussion. They also talked about how sports med has changed through the ages.

Tim Costello, the head of world vision australia talked about global poverty and how changing the poorest nations health and health infrastructure is the most effective way to bring them out of poverty.

Vinay Kumar flew in from the USA for free. (Apparently a lot of them volunteered their services but he had quite the distance to cover!) You won't know who he is, not even mom did, until I mentioned that he is the chief editor of Robbins' Pathological Basis of Disease. Aka a text book used by 95% of med schools around the world for around 50 years! He is this 70-something year old Indian, who worked with Robbins himself, and is basically considered the king of pathology. People actually brought their textbooks and lined up to have him sign it! He spent most of his free time with the UQ delegation (that's my school!) hanging out and even having some drinks! Hilarious man.

Jeff Kennett is a former politician who retired after someone in his family took her life from depression, to chair a national depression initiative entitled "Beyond Blue". He gave a passionate speech on the importance of basically having a life outside medicine. Having hobbies, having time to do nothing and relax, and having a support group (and GP) for yourself, both as a med student and doctor. Just a great speaker and he gave a great talk. It coincided nicely with the fact that AMSA launched a "Get a GP" campaign a few days before.

And lastly, my favourite talk was by Jeff Rosenfeld. He is a neuro surgeon and prof in Melbourne. He talked about a technique he pioneered and then helped teach other neuro surgeons how to do it. But it got really interesting when he started talking about how he likes to give his time to those less fortunate. He does teaching stints at the one med school in Papua New Guinea teaching surgery and neurosurgery. He works as a surgeon for the Aus Defence Force and that has brought him to Rwanda, East Timor, Solomon Islands, Bougainville and Iraq. He showed amazing pictures about how quickly the defence can get in and set up a field hospital in remote areas during times of crisis. Places like Iraq and Rwanda were during the wars, but he went to the island nations after natural disasters such as tsunamis hit. Basically the army can set up a fully functioniong hospital and these surgeons go nonstop. Amazingly powerful speech!


So it was great to hear all these talks and obviously - as med students are renowned for doing - we managed to squeeze in some fun in between!