Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences is the largest faculty of University of Melbourne, with the most post-graduate students, and also hosts the most school departments and centres of all University of Melbourne Faculties, consisting of 52 faculty sub-organisations. In 2021, Melbourne Medical School was ranked 25th in the world and second in Australia in the 2021 QS Subject Rankings.
When the Murray Committee reported in 1956 on the inadequacies of the nation's tertiary education sector, the mood to change medical education accelerated. The university was central to the revolution to medicalise society through the expansion of medical services. During the decades to follow, the university was the only tertiary institution to mentor the development of a number of medical institutions in South-East Asia and here in Victoria, the Monash Medical School.
In 1989 the university's Faculty of Dental Science amalgamated with Medicine to become the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and later expanded again to include Physiotherapy, Psychology and Nursing.
The university established Australia's first School of Population and Global Health in 2001 and then the School of Rural Health in 2002. As of 2016, the faculty also includes the School of Social Work (having moved from the University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts) as well as the Nossal Institute for Global Health.
In line with the Melbourne Curriculum (formerly the 'Melbourne Model'), the Faculty provides the Bachelor of Biomedicine, a three-year, full-time degree that offers 12 majors across biomedical disciplines.
For the year of 2016 The University of Melbourne attracted more nationally competitive research funding than any other Australian university.
In the year of 2010, Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne achieved the maximum world rating (5) in the Excellence in Research for Australia Report (scale of 1 to 5) in the areas of:
Medical and Health Sciences
Medical Biochemistry and Metabolomics
Cardiovascular Medicine and Haematology
Clinical Sciences Dentistry
Immunology
Neurosciences
Oncology and Carcinogenesis
Ophthalmology and Optometry
Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Medical Physiology
The Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences which forms part of the Faculty is one of the oldest and largest departments of psychology in Australia with its first paper on Psychology written in February 1888 and the Department of Psychology being founded in 1946
In 2011 the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences introduced the Doctor of Physiotherapy as Australia's first three-year entry to practice graduate-level program
Faculty structure
The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences encompasses several Schools directly beneath it. Within each School, there are also several Departments, Research Centres, and Institutes, which themselves can also contain several Research Unit sub-organisations which focus on specific research areas. Below is an overview of the faculty's Schools and structure:
Melbourne Medical School
Department of Clinical Pathology
Department of Critical Care
Department of Medicine and Radiology
Department of Surgery
Department of Psychiatry
Department of Pediatrics
Department of General Practice
Department of Rural Health
Department of Medical Education
Alastair Sloan has been head of the Melbourne Dental School since 2020Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Mobile Learning Unit
Melbourne Dental School
Melbourne School of Health Sciences
Department of Audiology & Speech Pathology
Department of Nursing
Centre for Psychiatric Nursing
Department of Social Work
Department of Physiotherapy
Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine
Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Centre for Health Equity
Centre for Health Policy
Centre for Mental Health
Nossal Institute for Global Health
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
University Psychology Clinic
Frank Hird (right) was the third head of the department of biochemistry
The University of Melbourne was ranked ninth in the world in clinical, pre-clinical and health subjects by the 2018 QS World University Rankings. The Faculty is highly active with over 1400 researchers in eight broad research domains encompassing the breadth of medicine, dentistry and the health sciences.
As of 2016, some examples of research outcomes from the University of Melbourne School of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences include the Stentrode a collaboration between the University of Melbourne, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, and prosthetic body parts that can simulate touch sensations to amputees.
The Ultrasound Education Group (UEG) is a research and education group within the Department of Surgery, founded by Alistair and Colin Royse in 2004.
Patients in heart surgery have better probabilities of survival if arteries from their chest wall and arms are used to replumb their heart, instead of leg veins. By scrutinising 51,000 Australian patients, Melbourne researchers discovered the risk of dying prematurely was at least 22 per cent higher if any leg vein was used in coronarybypass surgery
Cardiac surgery relies heavily on donated blood because of the high blood transfusion rates. But a major study of over 5,000 heart surgery patients has now shown that surgeons can safely use significantly less blood than they have been. The potential saving is equivalent to around one blood donation (about 470 millilitres) per moderate-to-high risk patient.
Criticisms
In 2010 the Faculty drew criticism from the Australian Medical Students' Association (AMSA) over its decision to alter its course structure to allow full fee paying domestic student places:
"The Bradley report into Higher Education stated that participation by students from low socio-economic backgrounds in higher education in Australia needs to be increased. The Federal Government and Universities have been working hard to achieve this aim, which AMSA strongly supports. So for one of Australia's leading Universities to make an active decision to disadvantage students from low socio-economic backgrounds is very disappointing and will undermine much the good work being done around the nation", said Ross Roberts-Thomson, AMSA President. This alteration from labelling the course from "undergraduate" to "post-graduate" was seen as a way of avoiding the Australian Governments ban on full fee paying places for Undergraduate degrees, and as increasing potential barriers for applicants from low socio-economic background from enrolling.
Present and past Faculty Deans
Below is a List of all Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Science Deans from 1876 to present.
^University of Melbourne joint project to create the Stentrode
^Melbourne, Jane Gardner, University of (9 February 2016). "Moving with the power of thought". Pursuit. Retrieved 20 December 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Lyon, Amanda. "RACGP - Wired for ultrasound". The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners at www.racgp.org.au. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
^Canty, David; Barth, Jennifer; Yang, Yang; Peters, Nathan; Palmer, Andrew; Royse, Alistair; Royse, Colin (1 February 2019). "Comparison of learning outcomes for teaching focused cardiac ultrasound to physicians: A supervised human model course versus an eLearning guided self- directed simulator course". Journal of Critical Care. 49: 38–44. doi:10.1016/j.jcrc.2018.10.006. ISSN0883-9441. PMID30359924. S2CID53115045.
^Van Den Berg, Lucy (17 November 2017). "Hearty use of artery". Herald Sun www.heraldsun.com.au, p. 3. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
^Cigognini, Brendan; Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences (23 December 2016). "List of Deans 1876 - present". Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. The University of Melbourne. Retrieved 1 May 2020.
