JCU announced major staffing changes in the form of the Proposed Professional Service Changes. JCUMSA opposes the proposed changes to staffing and believes that the overall JCU student satisfaction and placement experience will be affected. I can confidently say that the CMD staff will work their very hardest to ensure that students are not affected if these changes are implemented. I provided feedback to the Vice-Chancellor Professor Simon Biggs formally through a letter which can be found here. JCUMSA has published information on our website to assist students with applying for leave. This information can be found here or directly through our website under ‘Health and Wellbeing’. We also have published a form to report an incident where you may wish to remain anonymous. This form can only be accessed by the JCUMSA Incident Response Committee. I hope that this form is used by students so that JCUMSA can escalate issues with appropriate staff members. Rural placements: We raised concerns about solo rural placements with staff recently; previously there has been overwhelming support from students for solo placements. We came to a compromise in which JCU will become more transparent in advertising solo placement locations, allowing students to make a more informed decision. Students will receive road safety information prior to undertaking rural placements in the future.
2023 Elections: Congratulations to everyone elected in JCUMSA positions for 2023! I wish you all the best for the year ahead! And thank you again to everyone I have had the pleasure to work with and represent this year, it has been an incredible experience!
Another wonderful year for our JCUMSA Academic team!! Our team of academic representatives worked tirelessly this year to advocate for student interests at every level. We have seen major improvements in course delivery and continue to maintain positive relationships with staff. Monthly staff and Board of Studies meetings have been attended by either myself or a suitable JCUMSA representative for the whole year with student concerns being raised at the highest level. In particular, clarification regarding student leave has been sought to improve and streamline this process. We will continue to work with staff to make sure students are able to access leave and understand the number of absent days they are entitled to. More information regarding the leave policy can be found on the Medicine Course Site and the JCUMSA website. Our mock MSATs and OSCEs are well underway with over 200 students already having attended their mock stations before the real thing in the weeks to come. A huge thank you to Bianca for organising this and creating high quality stations for students to practice with. This semester has also seen the revival of our annual Maggie Grant Speaker Night after a 2-year hiatus. We hope to continue this tradition for many years to come and continue to bring high quality and inspirational speakers to engage with our students. We would also like to thank the CMD and the Townsville City Council for their support in this event. Finally, I just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you to everyone who attended an event or signed up to help out throughout the year. It is only with your participation that JCUMSA is able to continue to advocate for students and provide high quality events. It has been an incredible year as your Academic VP and I look forward to seeing all the incredible things the incoming Academic VP will do next year!! Last thing – Good luck for exams (I know you will all smash it!), take care of yourselves and your peers, and take plenty of study breaks!!
Overall this year, I have overseen the organisation of 15 events, with 4 being new ones. This semester has seen 4 events so far, 2 being new and the other 2 being JCUMSA’s biggest yet! Let me take you through this eventful semester: Med Talent Night: JCUMSA’s first Med Talent Night since I have been at JCU was held in Building 45 with 9 performers and a packed audience! From slam poetry to clarinet playing, the night showed that Med certainly has talent!
Med Ball: Held at the beautiful Prestige Estate with 461 attendees (the biggest Med Ball ever!) Platters, a buffet, a 3-hour drinks package, DJ, photographer, transport to and from the venue to both JCU and the after party at Flinders with $5 basics all night were all provided and made for a wonderful night!
Are You Smarter than a Lecturer?: We were joined by Kate, Shashi, Zaf, Tarun and Ian for this fun new event! It was short, sweet and free which made it quite popular with around 97 attendees
Med Revue: 471 people attended ‘OSCE’s 11’ making it the biggest Med Revue audience ever! I organised the delivery of soft drinks and pizzas to the event (delivering over 400 pizzas was a mammoth task) It was mainly the Convenors Dylan, Eric, Bea, Novoneela, Dennis and Erin that did all the work so a huge shoutout goes to them!
Clinical End of Year Parties: End of year parties are being organised for Year 5 in Mackay and Year 4 and 5 in Cairns Other clinical years were surveyed and will be doing their own thing to celebrate Pre-clinical end of year parties will be covered by other Med Societies
Thank You! A huge thank you to all of the Event Reps and the rest of the JCUMSA team for all their support Also, thank you to everyone who attended the events! This successful year would not have been possible without you! I am so honoured to have held this position and am proud to have helped make 2022 a year to remember!
This year as JCUMSA’s Secretary has involved a lot of behind-the-scenes – from taking the minutes for our fortnightly executive team and monthly staff meetings to liaising with Bianca and the team with paperwork authorisation, day-to-day operations and admin work that keep our organisation running! In our JCUMSA x CMD staff meetings, I have also taken a role in advocating for various academic, wellbeing and mental health matters with the CMD; the process in applying for leave; concerns about rural placement safety, travel and accommodation and more 🙂 We had our Annual General Meeting (AGM) in September. In preparation, I liaised with JCUMSA’s Special Interest Groups (MINT, InPsych, OB/GYN) for any structure or governance updates. JCUMSA also updated our policy and the number of positions available for certain roles; changes that were approved at the AGM. Prior to the AGM, JCUMSA and our SIG’s position availabilities were announced for student nominations. Students running for an exec position for 2023 were given the opportunity to give a speech at the AGM. I feel incredibly blessed for the opportunity to serve as JCUMSA’s Secretary this year and even more grateful to have been able to work with and get to know this year’s exec team. Everyone this year has gone above and beyond and I feel so honoured to have been able to witness what everyone has achieved over the past 10 months Thank you so much for having me as your Secretary and congratulations to Jesleen for her role as Secretary next year – wishing you all the best! 🙂 Keen to see what JCUMSA gets up to next year.
I have begun an internal review into our data collection policies in the wake of the recent Optus breach: I intend to implement procedures that ensure that only essential customer data is collected through our online website and that old data is deleted systematically on a regular basis in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) I have already removed the requirement of a billing address for all website store orders as well as installed an API that automatically deletes customer/store data that is more than three years old The full outcome of this review will be published in the next Quarterly update (2023) by the incoming Treasurer
Med Ball is always a difficult event to coordinate from a ticketing perspective, but aside from some minor hiccups the event ran well and we ran almost exactly to budget predictions: I was successful in finalising the 2021 JCUMSA financial audit in late August with Cairns Quality Accounting: 2021 was a slightly cashflow negative year due to some unforeseen additional expenses for the Class of 2023 Halfway Ball starting the year off in the red CQA commended us improving our financial documentation as an organisation
Overall, as I discussed at the AGM we have kept to budget projections in most departments for this year, with the greatest revenue growth (60%) in sponsorship income I have donated the profits from the 2022 Med Revue to the Malaria Consortium The 2022 end-of-year budget review is being finalised; if you wish to receive a copy of the full breakdown including all transactions and where all our money is going, please get in touch with me Finally, as the curtains begin to draw on 2022 and I step down from the role, I’d like to reflect on some of my achievements in JCUMSA’s IT and financial department over the past 3 years: Processed 99 refunds and 97 reimbursements (2021-22) Overhauled the website ticketing system with reCAPTCHA implementation (2020) Upgraded website server hosting from HostRocket to SiteGround (2020) to Cloudways (2021) Overhauled JCUMSA refunds, reimbursements and grant applications (2021) Got registered with Square and introduced POS EFTPOS payments (2021) Introduced automated refunding through our ANZ Merchant Gateway (2021) Implemented a new website “Terms of Use” and “Refunds” policy (2021) Helped JCUMSA get registered with the Australian Charities and Nonprofits Commission (2022) Increased investment into the JCUMSA wellbeing portfolio from ~$800 (2020) to $1400 (2021) to $1800 (2022)
It has been an honour serving you as your JCUMSA Treasurer for the past two years. If nothing else, my objective has always been to make the finances of JCUMSA much more open and transparent – I hope I have achieved that! I congratulate Mali on her election as Treasurer for 2023 and I wish her well in continuing to invest in the student activities and events you love.
I have just returned from the third and final AMSA council this year in Canberra. I want to extend my thanks to all students who contributed to AMSA policy – our policy authors and reviewers have allowed JCU to have a voice at council. Improved JCU engagement was personally noted and commended by the AMSA CEO. My role this year has been incredibly rewarding and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to represent JCU on this level. I’ve made many incredible connections with students throughout Australia, attended events that I would not have had the opportunity to otherwise, and have truly been introduced to the wonderful cult(ure) that is AMSA. Thank you for having me as your AMSA representative for 2022. On that note, congratulations to Adi Enjeti, your 2023 AMSA Rep. Having attended a number of AMSA events, being actively involved in policy, and of course, convening and winning Vampire Cup ‘22 for JCU, I could not think of a better suited person to fill this role. Adi will join a growing number of JCU students who have signed up to be part of AMSA next year – with continuing JCU involvement and enthusiasm, I consider my job well done 🙂 I am so excited to see what you all achieve through 2023!
2022 Has been quite the year in the land of sponsorship!! We kicked off the year with our annual Welcome BBQ where all of our lovely 1st Years got to meet our major sponsors!! (MDA National, Avant, Defence Force Recruiting, AMAQ, MIPS, MIGA & AMBOSS) + A whole lotta freebies Careers Info Evening was a success!! 6 Guest speakers and a turn out of around 75 people. A range of doctors from Psychiatry, Anaesthesia, Microbiology/Infectious Diseases, Defence Force/General Practice and Pathology came to give us a glimpse of what their specialty is like and how we can hop onto the training pathways ourselves. We welcomed some new partnerships this year – The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), Oscer and OSCELab Ran a few quick deals throughout the year with AMBOSS, Oscer and Lecturio We somehow managed to bring in ~ $17,000 this year in sponsorship which all went towards running other JCUMSA events that we know and love Thank you so much for having me as your Sponsorship Officer in 2022, I’ve had such a fun time in this role – all thanks to the rest of the exec this year for being the greatest people ever. It’s been an absolute pleasure. :)) I just wanted to say a massive thank you to Dennis for all of his work as Junior Sponsorship Officer in 2022. I’m really excited to see all of the wonderful things he does as Sponsorship Officer in 2023 – wishing you all the best Dennis, you’ll smash it as always <3
Community & Wellbeing
Cathy Choong – [email protected]Really great year for our Interfaculty Womens and Mens Teams. A massive congratulations go to our Sports Representatives Clara and Faizan for organising everything and all your behind-the-scenes work! Awesome turnouts for our last few Teddy Bear Hospital visits for the year – special mention to Elise for all your hard work throughout the year! Blue Week, the week coinciding with National R U OK? Day, went terrifically, as we saw many students from Years 1-6 engaging in our activities which were aimed to raise awareness about the importance of mental health, looking out for our mates and taking the time to unwind always! A huge thank you goes to our Cairns Community and Wellbeing Representative Lucy for helping out with the activities in Townsville AND in Cairns! Hand n Hand sessions to commence after Lecture Recess (please contact me if you have any queries regarding the program :)) It has been a privilege to represent the students as Community and Wellbeing Officer for this year! I have gained significant insight into the support systems in the CMD, advocated for student concerns and have enjoyed getting to meet people who are passionate about mental health across the cohorts! I wish Zoe, the upcoming 2023 Community and Wellbeing Officer, all the best with her endeavours in this role and have no doubt in my mind that she will exceed all expectations!
Publications & Promotions
Mali Edirisinghe – [email protected]It’s been a big, fun year for Pubs and Promos! When I’m not drafting posts, editing media, sorting tickets, updating the website or sending emails, I’ve managed to tick a few projects off too: This year, our Pre-clinical Handbook was drawn in InDesign, and its print pilot has heaps of potential – I’d love for it to continue Super duper happy with the outcome of MBBS3’s EPIC physical flashcards Our 3-year-long website upgrade is finally complete front-end
From now until the end of the year we’ll be chipping away at: Graduation week ticketing A Clinical Handbook, primarily for MBBS4 2023, to hopefully continue over the years. An end-of-year highlight reel for all things JCUMSA!
Thanks to Emily and Eric for helping with ticketing, and Fatima and Adeena with promos. Instagram and Facebook engagement have shined this year – so a huge thank-you to all of you too! I’ve loved sharing JCUMSA memories and keeping you all in the loop with what we do. A warm congratulations and best wishes to Rahat as he takes over the Pubs and Promos Officer reins next year. I’m excited to see where 2023 takes us!
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