Dean's Update | Issue 1 | 2020
Reassuring and exciting. Autumn, with its annual constants of fire-tipped colours and cool equinox air. A new academic year, promising golden moments of discovery and delight.
Much changes around us, but the community we love here is a constant source of support and a reminder of our common goals and passions. Especially at times like these, it is such a privilege to be part of a global medical family, fighting for what is right and committed to caring for others.
Across the Northwest region, clinical colleagues are connecting in new ways to ensure that commitments to patients and to training future doctors are met. However much we want this time of restriction and challenge to pass, as it will, it is also a time of development, of enhanced skills of adaptability and resilience, of new approaches to care delivery and teaching, and of a new strength in our community.
A key strength is our care and kindness for each other. I was moved by the response of so many of you to events over the summer that prompted an awareness of the destructive presence of discrimination and the coming together to ensure we tackle this - as a family together in the School, and across our healthcare community. Read more about this here.
The new academic year is also a time to work together as we shape our forward journey. I would like to congratulate our new Graduate Rep, Andrew Bonsu, and Year 4 Reps, Lauren Greasley and Joshua John, who have already been appointed following nominations earlier in September.
Voting remains open for the reps in Years 3 and 5, and nominations are still open for Year 2. This will be a year when it will be especially important to have your input, so please do take a moment to vote for those you wish to represent you in the coming months. Likewise, if you are a new student doctor, I hope you will consider acting as a Year 1 Course Rep when the nominations open. It is a great way to support your peers and to demonstrate leadership, and advocacy skills. I am very much looking forward to working with all our reps over the next year.
It has been inspiring to see the innovative ways that many of you are finding to enable events, teach-ins and charity ventures to continue to bring vibrancy to our life in the School. Your clinical colleagues around the region have also been so impressed by the response you are making to the calling we share – showing responsibility for the social distancing that will limit the impact of viral transmission on our NHS, and pursuing your understanding of medicine with passion, despite all the variations that must now apply to timetables and teaching modalities.
In some ways, when we look back on this, ‘normal’ may be an even better normal because of what this experience has taught us to apply. For now, I am grateful to you for showing me that despite the social distancing of this time, we are even more together.
Professor Hazel Scott
Dean of the School of Medicine