Dear NSW graduating students,

NSWMSC is pleased to announce that the 2016 NSWMSC Intern Forum will be launched on Monday 20 July 2015, coinciding with the release of offers for the Direct Regional Allocation and Optimised Allocation recruitment pathways.

The NSWMSC Intern Forum is designed to connect graduating medical students who are interested in swapping the location of their internship for 2016. The aim is to facilitate communication between final year students across all seven NSW medical schools, providing an effective and equitable platform for potential swaps.

Our Intern Forum provides a number of features, including

• Adding and deleting a listing
• Ability to select multiple "desired networks" via a single listing (saving you time)
• Ability to filter listings according to "allocated" or "desired" networks (making the search process easier)
• Secure messaging via the website (it is then up to the other person to communicate directly with you, via the contact details you choose to provide in your message)

We would like to remind all students intending to use this facility to carefully read the rules for swapping internships, as outlined by HETI here: http://www.heti.nsw.gov.au/programs/m/faq

If you have any questions or experience any issues using the NSWMSC Intern Forum please get in touch.

Best of luck everyone!

Neel Gobin
NSWMSC Chair
[email protected]org.au


Other helpful links and resources for graduating medical students:

• Internship Information: a NSWMSC page containing helpful resources relating to the 2016 NSW Intern intake as well as a list of all important dates. Link here.
• Commonwealth Medical Internships (CMI) program for international students. Link here.
• National Medical Intern Data Management Working Group - full report.

Chris Cleary, founder of StreetMed, runs the entire non-profit organisation from her dining room table and her car. She manages a team of volunteers who provide street level physical and mental health first aid and welfare advocacy for Western Sydney’s homeless community.

Chris, a trained medic and mental health first aid, was volunteering with the homeless in Parramatta when she saw a real need for a first aid and mental health street level service dedicated to the homeless. She left her full time job as a first aid trainer and one month later in August 2014, had founded StreetMed and was out on the streets providing care.

“Everyone clothes, feeds and houses the homeless, but there was no one providing a street level care for the homeless,” Chris said.

Chris says that it’s the ability to build a rapport with people that makes StreetMed so successful. She is able to build relationships and trust with some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in our community. This enables their volunteers to act as a bridging service between our society’s most vulnerable and the services that can provide them the care they require.

“For various reasons some homeless people have a problem with authority and won’t call an ambulance or go to a hospital for help. So, I’ll take them to the hospital or whatever service they require in my car, make sure they get the help they need and connect them with other services.”

StreetMed operates with no funding, relying on volunteers and donations of first aid supplies, sleeping bags, blankets, clothing and toiletries. Chris has forged partnerships with organisations like Wentworth Community Housing and Platform Youth to help get her clients into housing.

Chris estimates that the biggest causes of homelessness are mental illness and domestic violence, followed by drug and alcohol issues.

“There is a real stigma around homelessness, that everyone is dangerous, but I trust those on the streets more than I trust those leaving an establishment at 3am in the morning. The people we deal with have a kind nature and look out for each other and for us as well. Society could learn a lot from homeless people and their sense of community,” Chris said.

“People fear what they don’t understand. There’s this idea about the homeless, that they’re all drug addicts or thieves. But we see whole families living in tents, mothers and babies living out of cars. And so many people living in car parks and on couches. This is where StreetMed provides such a valuable service in providing street level care to those who need it.

“I feel safer around the homeless that being in society sometimes. There is no judgement, or disrespect. All they want is a fair go.”

To find out more about StreetMed find them on Facebook or at www.streetmed.org.au.

Neel Gobin (Chair), Esther Zhou (Events Director), Tabish Aleemullah (Policy Officer) and Chris Lemon (Public Relations Officer) had a very productive meeting today with Health Minister, Jillian Skinner.

Andrew Kirk (Minister's Chief of Staff) and Robyn Burley (NSW Health Director of Workforce Planning & Development) were also present.

We discussed the maldistribution of doctors in the NSW workforce that sees a lack of practising doctors in rural/regional networks. NSWMSC proposed a number of alternatives - including increased funding for vocational and pre-vocational training positions, expansion of rural clinical schools, scholarships and improvements to the NSW JMO Recruitment Strategy to tackle the ‘bottleneck’.