I was browsing The Age's website after the start of an exciting evening at work **taking a breather now**. I arrived at work tonight with an unwell lady, who needed to be transferred to a tertiary hospital - probably will require ICU.
She was a previously fit and well 40 years old lady, who presented with some leg swelling and chest discomfort to her GP. She also complained of some mild PV bleeding, and a pelvic ultrasound revealed a mass in the lower uterine, which resembled a ?fibroid. She was then commenced on transexamic acid, and subsequently represented to hospital, with severe leg pain and arm pain. She was then diagnosed with multiple DVT's and PE's with a cervical ca that's actively bleeding upon starting her on heparin infusion.
She had an adrenaline soaked vaginal pad in situ, but was dislodged, and was still hosing PV. The ambulance came to transfer her to Clayton (just down the road) but apparently, they needed me to go along because they weren't MICA!
So yesh, I had to ride along with them in the ambulance (which was quite fun, really!) and then came back to Moorabbin with a Cabcharge. Oh well, thank God she got to Clayton, where they've got the facility and resources to look after her. I hope she'll get through this hardship without too much complication.
Anyways, I digress... below is the article that I read from The Age regarding Melbourne Uni's "new" model - the US style degree.
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Rethink on Melbourne Uni model
Farrah Tomazin
December 15, 2008
MELBOURNE University will revamp its "Melbourne Model" teaching system amid complaints that parts of the curriculum are overloaded or not challenging enough for students.
One year since launching the US-style degree program, university chiefs have conceded some subjects are too "content heavy", others too broad, and several are in need of a rethink.
Under review are a range of new interdisciplinary "breadth" subjects, which students must take in addition to their main degree. Vice-chancellor Glyn Davis said the subjects — which make up at least 25 per cent of the course load and vary from topics such as "Politics of the Body" to "African Drum and Dance" — would be restructured to better cater for students' needs.
It is understood subjects will not be scrapped, but some will be fine tuned, and others added to the program.
"When you launch a huge suite of new courses, they don't all work first time," Professor Davis said. "Some of them were too broad, and we're going to bring them back a little bit; some weren't sufficiently integrated — they had too many lecturers standing up, one after the other, without having spent enough time talking to each other. We're going to address that."
Over the next four years, 96 undergraduate degrees will be abolished and replaced with six broad-brush degrees: arts, science, commerce, environments, music and biomedicine.
Double-degrees have been phased out, and such popular courses as medicine and law are no longer available in first year. Instead, students must complete one of the six "new generation" degrees, and then undertake a graduate program, such as a doctorate or masters, in areas such as law, medicine, education, engineering or nursing.
Dozens of interdisciplinary "breadth" subjects have also been created to allow students to study in areas outside their main degree, in a bid to broaden their academic experience.
But while many people have embraced the new system, its first year has coincided with dozens of job cuts and staff complaints about workload and a lack of resources to cope with the shift.
"I think people are finding the reality of the model much more difficult than how it was initially portrayed," said lecturer Ted Clark, the university's National Tertiary Education Union president.
Student union president Libby Buckingham said reports about the breadth subjects had been mixed: many liked them because they opened up areas of study such as languages and music. However, others had said their subjects were shallow or not challenging enough.
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All I can say is, thank God I'm not one of the guinea pigs to "try out" this new Melbourne model. I'm not saying that it's not any good. But I believe in the many many years of "evidence based" learning model that I went through, and have got no complaints thus far :)
Well, hopefully, they'll sort this out soon and their train will run on full steam again~!
