Brisbane Primary Short Course
Information and Program
This note is to give some information about the course. The course is a two week full-time course. The program is developed over January-April and dates/times of actual sessions is very dependent on availability of the lecturers/presenters.
Changes for 2007 Course (updated 12th Nov 06)
New venue: ANZCA
Queensland has now moved out of the previous College building and college staff
are located in 'temporary' offices. The new venue for the course is the lecture
room at the Wesley Hospital in Brisbane.
More details closer to the course. This is a couple of miles out of the city but
is on a major bus route, and is adjacent to the Auchenflower Railway Station, so
it is easy to get to. There is on-site undercover parking and we believe this
will be either free or at a subsidised rate for course attendees. For those
registrars from out-of-town, some
information on local accomodation is available.
New dates: The course has traditionally been held in the last 2 weeks
of May (and the exam at the end of July). The expected dates for the course in 2007
is the 2 weeks from April 30th to May 11th. This is because the Primary written date for 2007
is earlier (2nd July) and also because the ANZCA ASM 2007 will be held in late May
(instead of the usual early May). This will leave about the same gap between the course
and the exam and will avoid conflict with the College meeting.
New acceptance criteria: In recent years the course has been
restricted to those sitting the July Primary. This has been because of the high
demand for the limited places. The new venue is able to accommodate more
people so more people can be accepted into the course.
Wiki
contribution The requirement for a small
contribution to the Black Bank Wiki will remain. For the 2006 course all
that was required was a contribution to comments for three MCQs. This is pretty
minimal really and the purpose is to get people learning by contributing to the
wiki resource and community. On the application form you will be asked to
provide brief details of your contribution.
Credit
Card
payments. The course has informed me that they are no longer accepting
PayPal payments at all. They have negotiated a very low transaction rate with
their bank, so it is cheaper for them to accept Credit Card payments.
Other information
This course is a College run course in that it is organised and run by the Queensland Regional Committee of the College and all the organisation and financial aspects are managed by the College.
The structure of the course and the organising of the program & lecturers are my responsibility as the course convenor.
A few points:
- The course has BOTH Physiology AND Pharmacology sessions. Registrars sitting only one component in the exam should consider before enrolling whether the course meets their requirements. It is difficult to split the Physiology & Pharmacology sessions easily for several reasons (but particularly lecturer availability). Of course you only have to attend the sessions you want to but there is one fixed course fee.
- The course provides a MIX of types of sessions. This structure has evolved over the years based most significantly on feedback from registrar groups in previous years.
- Sessions include various "exam workshop" sessions (including exam practice such as practice MCQ papers, SAQ papers etc). Some of these workshop sessions cover important topics in an very interactive style.
- All the presenters are Anaesthetists (or Intensivists) who have sat the Primary themselves so have a great appreciation of what the exam involves. Many of the 'lecture' sessions are fairly interactive.
Kerry Brandis (Course Convenor)