Welcome from the Associate Dean

As the Associate Dean of Sydney Medical School - Northern, I am pleased to welcome you to this division of Sydney Medical School. Northern comprises a range of clinical teaching facilities spread over the whole of the northern area of Sydney and beyond. The School is headquartered at the Royal North Shore Hospital, which has provided teaching to undergraduate medical students for over 60 years. These headquarters have recently been relocated into a magnificent new building in the Hospital grounds, the Kolling Building. However the clinical school also includes a range of metropolitan, private and specialised hospitals, as well as many sites of health care delivery in the community, including a wide network of General Practitioners. The school is also closely associated with a number of sites of rural practice, such as Lismore and Murwillumbah in northern New South Wales, and has built close academic and clinical ties with Hanoi Medical University in Vietnam.

Teaching within the clinical school is provided by a large number of clinicians, including academics, hospital specialists with academic titles, and many private practitioners, in both hospital and community settings, who contribute to the teaching program on an honorary part-time basis. While the Sydney Medical Program is the main context for student teaching, medical education continues into the early postgraduate years, and indeed further into the specialist training programs conducted by the various Royal Colleges. The clinical school also has links with the education of nurses and allied health practitioners, in hospital and community settings.

Medical research is another major activity of this clinical school. Around 100 postgraduate research students undertake their training towards a higher degree in the facilities of the School, under the supervision of scientists and clinicians conducting research programs in a wide variety of fields. Basic laboratory-based research is conducted in the Kolling Building on the Royal North Shore Hospital campus, mostly within the Kolling Institute of Medical Research, the oldest research institute in the state of New South Wales. Clinical and epidemiological research is conducted elsewhere on the Hospital campus and at other sites within the clinical network of the School. There is an active Postgraduate Research Students Society, and regular research seminars are conducted throughout the year.

Sydney Medical School - Northern, has built a well-deserved reputation for innovative educational programs, and a strong emphasis on giving students access to a broad range of clinical and research opportunities. More information about all of these activities is given in other parts of this website. The administrative team of the school is ready to respond to enquiries, both electronically and in person, and together with the managers at all hospitals, the teachers, young doctors in training, and medical students, they are keen to help you in any way they can.

Jonathan Morris