I put in my application that I didn't claim to have this knowledge but that I thought it was very important to acquire. So I had to put in how I was proposing to acquire it. I made inquiries and found that at Monash University, rather than at Melbourne, there was something called the Diploma of Tertiary Education. I put it to the Committee and they approved and paid for me to attend part-time at Monash and acquire the Diploma of Tertiary Education so that I could apply educational principles in the postgraduate training. And I found it an absolute eye-opener, learning about student evaluation, checking that the students had understood what was said to them, all sorts of stuff. To this day, I’m appalled at the ignorance among the teaching community in universities of basic principles of teaching.

Glenn Bowes: Before John McNamara jumps in, I'd like to come back to the gender issue.

John McNamara: I was going to say something on that. I'd like to comment as one of the people on the selection panel for junior medical staff. We tried to base it on merit.

Susan Sawyer: I'm not wanting to be critical.

Glenn Bowes: I'll tell an amusing story the other way, John. I was amazed when I came to the Children’s in the early '90s because I was invited to one of these selection processes which I think used to occur traditionally at dinner at the Melbourne Club, which was a useful representation of the fact that there was at least some semblance of gender inequity that was likely to occur, at least in the balance of the people meeting for dinner to make those judgments about who were going to be the future leaders. So I think it was a sign of the times. I think that’s where some of those meetings were held

Peter Phelan: The informal parts.

Glenn Bowes: The informal parts. Yes, the important ones.

Frank Oberklaid: My comment is about graduate teaching. When I came back from Boston in 1980, the focus really was on paediatric training. And at that time the majority of trainees in Victoria were residents coming to the hospital not destined for a career in paediatrics but for a career in general practice. That was glaringly apparent. So we approached the College of GPs[119] and developed a Working Party that used to meet at seven in the morning, I recall, and developed a curriculum.

There was a tutorial every day for those three months and we developed resources, outside GPs were brought in, and so on and so on. That then subsequently became the core of the national program in paediatrics and child health for the College of GPs. We then started developing continuing medical education programs for GPs in child health, which continues to this day. The Children's Hospital now manages the national education and training programs for GPs, community nurses, we did pharmacy there for a while, child care, family and day care. So that’s greatly extended [the training focus]. I think for a long time the focus was just on paediatric education, not realising that the vast majority of children who are unwell don’t go to a paediatrician.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine