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.
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History
The University of Melbourne's School of Medicine was founded in 1858 by Anthony Brownless, a graduate of the University of St Andrews School of Medicine. By Federation in 1901, the school had become the Faculty of Medicine.
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
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
Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Mobile Learning Unit
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
School of Biomedical Sciences
Department of Anatomy & Physiology
Department of Biochemistry & Pharmacology
Department of Microbiology & Immunology
Microbiological Diagnostic Unit
Faculty Institutes, Centres and Departments
Health & Biomedical Informatics Centre
Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health
Melbourne Neuroscience Institute
The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute)
Centre for Youth Mental Health
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI)
Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Medical Bionics Department
The Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
Burnet Institute
Murdoch Children's Research Institute
St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research
Centre for Digital Transformation of Health
Research
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.
UEG's research topics are transthoracic echocardiogram; transesophageal echocardiography for cardiac surgery; clinical point of care diagnostic ultrasound for heart, vascular, lungs, abdomen, invasive procedures. Other areas of research include cardiothoracic surgery; cardiothoracic anaesthesia; postoperative quality of recovery in surgery; and self-directed learning with ultrasound simulators.
UEG research outcomes include:
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 coronary bypass 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.
1876–1886 George Britton Halford
1886–1889 Harry Brookes Allen
1890–1896 George Britton Halford
1897–1924 Harry Brookes Allen
1925–1929 Richard James Arthur Berry
1929–1938 William Alexander Osborne
1939–1943 Peter MacCallum
1944–1945 Robert Marshall Allan
1946–1947 Roy Douglas Wright
1947–1949 Peter MacCallum
1950–1952 Roy Douglas Wright
1953–1971 Sydney Sunderland
1971–1977 Sydney Lance Townsend
1978–1985 David Geoffrey Penington
1986–1995 Graeme Bruce Ryan
1995–1997 Gordon James Aitken Clunie
1998–2003 Richard Graeme Larkins
2003–2013 James Alexander Angus
2013–2015 Stephen Kevin Smith
2015–2016 Mark Hargreaves