Reports and Statements

The Medical Deans report ‘Changing for Good: What We Learned in 2020’ charts the early impacts of COVID-19 on medical education in Australia and New Zealand. It explores members’ views of how we might build on some of the innovation and collaboration that occurred, to embed and further drive improvements in medical education and training.

Whilst the impact of the pandemic on medical education was immense and costly – both financially and personally for everyone involved – such a scale of disruption provided a unique opportunity for step-change. Medical Deans and medical schools want to capitalise on the resourcefulness and innovation of 2020 in the ways highlighted in this report.

To fully realise the potential on offer, we seek to work in partnership with all those involved: students, health services, prevocational training, specialist colleges, regulators, and governments.

This document provides advice, potential resources, and a suggested framework for medical schools to consider in their approach to building greater inclusivity within their culture, systems, and environment to support students with a disability. 

COVID-19 brought about rapid changes, ongoing uncertainties and new teaching approaches in medical education across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The disruption caused by COVID-19 also brought the importance of professionalism to the forefront and highlighted the challenges in defining, teaching, assessing professionalism, and effectively remediating unprofessional behaviour.  

To support the medical educators and clinical supervisors at our member schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Medical Education Collaborative Committee of Medical Deans established a working group who were tasked with providing practical guidance about how professionalism and professional identity is taught and assessed in the medical program, particularly when navigating the changes brought about by COVID-19.  

This report, Professionalism and professional identity of our future doctors, provides an overview of the current approaches to how professionalism is defined, taught, assessed, and remediated across Australian and New Zealand medical schools; common challenges and systemic issues; suggestions on potential areas for future collaboration and further research; and suggested useful resources. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused considerable disruption to medical programs and how students are supported in their learning to progress through to graduation. Of particular focus has been the need to continue students’ access to clinical placements and address the reduced availability of clinical teachers in some areas. As a result, medical schools have worked rapidly and innovatively to implement changes to their programs to deal with these difficulties in delivering teaching and training, and to adapt the associated student assessments.

MDANZ surveyed medical schools in Australia and New Zealand in 2019, to gain a better understanding of the degree to which they include research education and skills training in the curriculum. 21 of the schools responded and the results shine a light on what is happening in medical program research.

This curriculum framework provides medical schools with a set of guidelines for the development and delivery of Indigenous health content in core medical education. It articulates the basic components of a functional curriculum to ensure medical students receive the right information and skills development to enable them to become the best doctors we can produce for the improvement of Indigenous health outcomes.