International Arts and Health Conference

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT)

14 to 18 November 2011

Dear Arts and Health Colleague

We are holding this year’s International Arts and Health Conference at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra from 14 to 18 November 2011. This will give us an excellent opportunity to put arts and health directly on the federal government agenda and will provide an opportunity to showcase outstanding public programs at the NGA – which leads the arts and health field in the museums and galleries sector in Australia.

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the NGA for partnering with us for this conference. In particular, the new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Art Galleries will be a beautiful backdrop to explore the area of arts and health in our Aboriginal communities and the national collection will also be utilised to explore the use of the visual arts in arts and health programs that encompass intergenerational activities, art in hospitals and aged care facilities, medical education, creative ageing and mental health, including the NGA’s celebrated Art and Dementia outreach and research program.

This year the number of delegates will be restricted to 250 and online registrations will open mid May. You will receive a reminder notice shortly regarding this.

Please note that if you submit an abstract for the 2011 conference, you will also have the opportunity to be included in the selection process for the 2011 Arts and Health Australia Awards for Excellence.

We hope you will be able to join us in November for what promises to be a very special arts and health gathering.

Please contact me personally if you would like any further information.

Best wishes

Margret Meagher

Arts and Health Australia and The Australian Centre for Creative Ageing

Regional Office: Suite 2, The Macquarie Garrison Building,

26 Clarence Street, Port Macquarie NSW 2444 Australia

Postal Address: PO Box 243 Kings Cross NSW 1340 Australia

Tel:  02 6583 5040    Fax:  02 6584 0024    Mobile:  0416 641 482

Email:    margret@artsandhealth.org    Web:     www.artsandhealth.org

2011 Distinguished Fellow, Society for the Arts in Healthcare

Join us on twitter @ArtsHealthOz and #ArtsHealthOz

(A high res print quality version of this information is available on request by email or you can access from www.artsandhealth.org)

Presented by AMA (NSW) Creative Doctors Network

Chair: Dr Tony Chu

Date: Thursday 5 May 2011, 6.30pm for 7pm

Venue: AMA Conference Centre, AMA House, 69 Christie Street, St Leonards Cost (pay at the door) $25 / $10 AMA Members & Presenters RSVP to janene@amansw.com.au All welcome.

SUBMISSION DETAILS FOR FILMS:

You can submit any short film, documentary, mockumentary or music video.

We welcome entries from doctors and medical students.

Open to NSW, interstate and international submissions.

Duration: Up to 15 minutes.

Content must be rated G, PG or M

[NOTE: Films that are MA or R will not be screened.] Films can be any genre and made in any year.

There must be at least one doctor involved in the film either as cast or crew.

Submissions deadline: Mon 18 April, 2011

PRIOR EVENT:

(1) Please email a short synopsis of your film.

(2) Please email a short biog about yourself (100 words)

(3) Please also email any additional promo materials if available (e.g. a link to trailer, movie poster, stills)

Email: tonycdn@gmail.com

ON THE NIGHT:

On the night, please bring a DVD copy of your film (PAL, region 0).

Please attend the event to do Q & A.

FILMMAKERS UNABLE TO ATTEND:

If you cannot attend, please post in your DVD in advance (address will be supplied).

In addition, please also submit an extra video discussing your inspiration for your film.

Email: tonycdn@gmail.com

Many thanks.

Kind regards

Tony

–

Dr Tony Chu

President AMA (NSW) Creative Doctors Network (CDN)

M: 0412 230 415

E: tonycdn@gmail.com

Presented by AMA (NSW) Creative Doctors Network

The next CDN event will be for doctor-filmmakers [Thurs 5 May 2011].

We’ve dubbed it: “CINEMATIC DOCTORS NIGHT. Screening films, music videos and documentaries”.

See submission details below.

Event: ‘CINEMATIC DOCTORS NIGHT’

Presented by AMA (NSW) Creative Doctors Network

Chair: Dr Tony Chu

Date: Thursday 5 May 2011, 6.30pm for 7pm

Venue: AMA Conference Centre, AMA House, 69 Christie Street, St Leonards Cost (pay at the door) $25 / $10 AMA Members & Presenters All welcome.

SUBMISSION DETAILS FOR FILMS:

You can submit any short film, documentary, mockumentary or music video.

We welcome entries from doctors and medical students.

Open to NSW, interstate and international submissions.

Duration: Up to 15 minutes.

Content must be rated G, PG or M

[NOTE: Films that are MA or R will not be screened.] Films can be any genre, made in any year.

There must be at least one doctor involved in the film, either as cast or crew.

Deadline: Mon 18 April, 2011

BEFORE THE EVENT:

(1) Please give a short synopsis of your film.

(2) Please email a short biog about yourself (100 words)

(3) Please also provide any additional promo materials if available (e.g. a link to trailer, movie poster, stills)

Email: tonycdn@gmail.com

ON THE NIGHT:

On the night, please bring a DVD copy of your film (PAL, region 0).

Please attend the event to do Q & A.

FILMMAKERS UNABLE TO ATTEND:

If you cannot attend, please post in your DVD in advance (address will be supplied).

In addition, please also submit an extra video discussing your inspiration for your film.

Many thanks.

Kind regards

Tony

–

Dr Tony Chu

President AMA (NSW) Creative Doctors Network (CDN)

M: 0412 230 415

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Submit now to DOC ART FESTIVAL 2011 [Sun 3 July, 12pm]

Theme: Laughter is the best medicine Show us how creative you can be!

(1) photos

(2) writing

(3) films

(4) performances

(5) visual arts

Finalists compete for Judge’s Award + People’s Choice Award.

For Festival Entry Form, email: tonycdn@gmail.com

Woodward, Susan. “Uniform national standards urged for medical students”. Campus Review. 24 January 2011.

The report cites research showing that although most medical schools across Australia have “fitness to practise” policies, these are inconsistent and unproven. This has implications for future professional behaviour, specifically that “undergraduate medical students with poor professional performance often became problem doctors who faced future disciplinary action from medical boards”. The article makes the point that it is very difficult to assess students’ professionalism.

One of the interesting points about professionalism in medical students is just this issue of assessment. What exactly is meant by “professional behaviour”? Who assesses it? How is it assessed? Isn’t this the whole point of running professional development subjects and ethics, to specifically address students’ need to learn professional behaviour – or is there an unspoken assumption that students somehow take on professional attitudes and behaviour through osmosis – just by being in the medical school?

And in today’s social media dominated society, is it more important than ever to help students navigate their way to professional behaviour because of the heightened potential to share too much information online via twitter or facebook or youtube? A few students have been in trouble for unprofessional acts online, such as violating patient privacy and confidentiality. The article notes that revues and skits have long been a tradition for med students, but the point is that online misbehaviour is public and permanent. It can be deleted, but it is never fully erased. We already know that job recruiters may check candidates’ facebook profiles to weed out applicants – are we going to see future GPs, surgeons and health professionals held captive to past decisions to post inappropriate content in previous years? Since social media sites such as facebook and twitter seem to blur the lines between private and public lives, it seems an increasingly important area to consider.

The first CDN event will be for doctor-writers [Thurs 3 Feb 2011]. The theme will be: “Wordsmith Doctors – Readings of stories, plays, biographies and poems”.

ATTENTION: Doctors + medical students who are writers.
We would like to hear your work!
See submission details below.

Event: ‘WORDSMITH DOCTORS NIGHT’
Presented by AMA (NSW) Creative Doctors Network
Chair: Dr Susan Ogle
Date: Thursday 3 Feb 2011, 6.30pm for 7pm
Venue: AMA Conference Centre, AMA House, 69 Christie Street, St Leonards
Cost: $25 (pay at the door) / $10 AMA Members
All welcome.
Please RSVP to Jasmine (essential) for catering purposes
Ph:  9439 8822
Email:  jasmine@amansw.com.au

Highlights:
* Audience Voting
* Friendly show & Tell
* Fun social evening
* Finger food + beverages

SUBMISSION DETAILS for Writers:
They can be extracts of stories, plays, biographies and poems.
On the night, please be prepared to read your work + do Q & A afterwards.

(1) COVER SHEET:
Your name.
Title of the work
Contact details (email & phone)
Word count (max: 500 words, poetry <15 lines)
Short biography of yourself (100 words)

(2) THE WORK:
Title of work on each page
Pages numbered
Double spacing

(3) EMAIL:
Please submit your writing to: Dr Susan Ogle (CDN Writing Coordinator)
Email: sogle@med.usyd.edu.au

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As we’ve found many doctors are writers, this night has become one of our most popular events on the CDN calendar. A chance to showcase your work to your peers!

Dr Tony Chu
President
AMA (NSW) Creative Doctors Network (CDN)
M: 0412 230 415
E: tonycdn@gmail.com

Friday 10 September 2010, 3.00pm to 5.0opm

Lecture theatre 30.G213: Building 30, UWS Campbelltown campus

Followed by drinks in the Common Room

“The Celluloid Strip” – Mass screening for tuberculosis in Australia, 1950-1975

Dr Peter J. Tyler

ABSTRACT:

Tuberculosis was a significant cause of mortality at the beginning of the Second World War when the technique of taking miniature X-ray photographs on movie film was introduced to Australia as part of the medical examination of men enlisting in the armed forces.  Immediately after the war, the Anti-Tuberculosis Association of NSW expanded its existing diagnostic clinic in Sydney to provide a mobile X-ray service to country areas and industry.  That experience provided a model for the subsequent national campaign which the Commonwealth Government funded to detect and treat the disease.

Coincidentally, at the same time as the compulsory national screening program commenced, the first effective therapy for the disease became available.  Antibiotic drugs soon achieved results that long periods of rest in a sanatorium had never accomplished.  Government funding was withdrawn after the incidence of tuberculosis diminished, so that by 1975 the ubiquitous X-ray caravans began to disappear from street corners around Australia. This paper describes the logistics of the mass screening campaign during the third quarter of the twentieth century, and the technological developments that made it possible.

Peter Tyler is the Historian of the Royal Society of New South Wales, which is the oldest scientific organisation in Australia, tracing its origins to 1821. Last year Dr Tyler was the inaugural Merewether Research Scholar at the Mitchell Library, and is currently preparing a history of the government archives in New South Wales since 1788 for the State Records Authority. His PhD from University of New England was awarded for a thesis on the Board of Health. He is a former President of the NSW Society of the History of Medicine.

In the latest issue, vol 40 no.4, there is an essay by Martha Montello about Jodi Picoult, the best-selling author who popularises bioethical issues in the form of airport novels. I confess to having read two of Picoult’s books, My Sister’s Keeper and Salem Falls, and cannot deny their page-turning qualities. Once started, I read both novels compulsively until I finished, all the while rather ashamed of myself for so doing. Montello’s scathing take on Jodi Picoult is an opinion with which it’s hard to disagree: that Picoult dramatizes medical ethics issues without actually taking a stand on any of them. Her novels tend to take on the same formula each time – Picoult sets up a terrible medical situation involving at least one child and at least one pair of seriously flawed parents, makes the various members of the family and/or community deal with the issues (badly) in different ways, and then instigates a plot twist that amounts to a cop-out. The issues brought out in her books are often real, difficult and important, but she fails to deal with them in an effective way. Yes, as her readers say, her novels ‘make you think’ – but this is the result of the ethical issues in themselves. Picoult’s way of writing about these issues do little to help you think, or to explore the issues intelligently for the real world.

Montello says, “We need fiction writers who will take on the tough questions, wrapping them in pulp fiction if they must, but who will also have the courage to go the distance… Fiction, John Gardner once said, is a moral laboratory. Through well-crafted narratives, a reader examines how a singular person, situated in a specific context, might live a life. A novel that pursues this kind of inquiry with integrity and passion may not only capture the particularities of experience, but also the very processes by which we reach moral understanding and make our choices. We need stories that can lead us into the lives of these children and their families in the unique way of fiction, capturing their experience, making us care, and taking us where we need to go.”

De Leonardis, Fabio (2008) ‘War as medicine: the medical metaphor in contemporary Italian political language’, Social Semiotics, 18: 1, 33-45

Hodgkin, P (1985) ‘Medicine is war: and other medical metaphors’, British Medical Journal, vol. 291

Some interesting themes emerged from the discussion:

1. The ‘distancing effect’ of metaphors and how they are both powerful and dangerous at the same time. Talking about ‘surgical bombing’ might give you an instant way into a common language for understanding about precision etc. but the reality on the ground is that bombing is never precise and will always involve death and destruction and used in this way, the effect of metaphor is to distance the community from reality.

2. Metaphor in the context of social and political conditions. Metaphors are likely to be more powerful if they align with community sentiment. Berlasconi’s use of the cancer/metastasis metaphor to refer to immigrants is a good example of this. What is the effect of metaphorical language in the absence of the ‘right’ conditions?

3. The body as machine. How prevalent is this metaphor in teaching and learning about medicine? As an instrument for learning how useful is it?

We will keep you posted on details about the next meeting but in the meantime any comments on the topics above are welcome.

Ousager, Jakob, & Johannessen, Helle. 2010. Humanities in Undergraduate Medical Education: A Literature Review. Academic Medicine:
June 2010 – Volume 85 – Issue 6 – pp 988-998.

One for the reading group/ journal club, I think! Obvious questions arise: is the research published in journals an accurate measure of what is actually going on in med schools (it isn’t – plenty of programs never see the light of day in a journal)? How exactly do we measure educational effectiveness anyway? Especially long term? On the other hand, great to see some research on this area and well worth a discussion.

Also, for something completely different, read this article from the Australian. An Indian doctor/academic in Australia has written a film called Riwayat, about three pregnant women living in parts of India where female babies are usually aborted. Apparently it has four songs in the film… not sure if we can count on Bollywood dancing too.

The subject matter (female gender/doctor’s role in upholding cultural practices) in some ways recalls recent media coverage of the American Academy of Pediatrics considering the right to perform a type of female circumcision (some say genital mutilation) of African girls in the US, purportedly to stave off illegal and dangerous operations that would be done anyway. Plenty of room for heated discussion here. The AAP has since withdrawn its policy and confirmed its original stance against any form of genital cutting, most likely due to the media attention which generated some controversy. The Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is reported to have also considered changing their policy on this matter for the purposes of “harm minimisation”.