Tel: 23401830 Fax: 23401211; E-mail: healthsciences@um.edu.mt; Website: http://www.um.edu.mt/healthsciences
FHS Monthly Newsletter – March 2011
PAST EVENTS
Learning EXPO 2011 - Over 5,000 students visited the Expo
The Leaning EXPO 2011 organised by the Ministry of Education, Employment and the Family
was held between the 1st and the 5th March, 2011. As expected, over 5,000 students (from 4th
and 5th forms) from State, Church and Private School visited this year Learning EXPO.
The FHS had its own
stand and the following
members of the academic
staff have participated: Ms
Marjorie Bonello, Mr
René Mifsud and Ms
Joanna Bellia from the
Occupational
Therapy
Department.
FHS stand during Learning Expo March 2011 – Venue MFCC Ta` Qali
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University Week 14th – 19th March , 2011 – Visit to FHS Labs:
During the University Discover Week, the general public was invited to visit the FHS labs
during the following hours:
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Monday, 14th March, one visit at 10.00 hours
Tuesday, 15th March, two visits daily at 10.00 hours and 12.00 hours
Thursday, 17th March, two visits daily at 10.00 hours and 12.00
Friday, 18th March, two visits daily at 10.00 hours and 12.00 hours
Thanks go to the Malta Health Students Association (MHSA) and Mr Joe Mark Gatt, Lab
Officer, FHS, who showed visitors around our labs and made the above possible. Thanks also to
the Head of Departments for their response and their students for their participation and
collaboration.
RESEARCH, PUBLICATIONS & PRESENTATIONS
Publications – FHS and Mental Health Nursing Brochures
The new FHS brochure has now been published and copies are available from the reception.
Also available is the new Mental Health Nursing brochure.
Mental Health brochure
New FHS brochure
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Public Lecture by the Midwifery Department, FHS
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Subject:
Speaker:
Date:
Venue:
Clinical Academic Careers within the Health Care Provider Setting
Dr Debbie Carrick-Sen, Visiting Lecturer, Midwifery Department
Wednesday 30th March 2011 between 12:00 - 13:00hrs
FHS South Auditorium
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Research Seminars for Faculty lecturing staff and students undertaking a doctoral degree
Please find an updated schedule of the Research Seminar to be held in the Staff room between 1
and 2 pm.
Date
6th Apr 2011
Presenter
Study
Ms Josephine Attard
PhD
Department
Midwifery
(in progress)
4th May 2011
Ms Claire Sillato Copperstone PhD
Food Stud. & Env. Health
(in progress)
18th May
2011
Mr Anthony Scerri
MSc
Nursing/ Health Services Mgt.
Dr Anna McElhatton and Dr Roberta Sammut gave excellent presentations on the 9th and 23rd
March, 2011 respectively.
RefWork at FHS IT Laboratory – April, 2011
The University of Malta Library is organising a number of training workshops for all academic
members of staff who are interested to know more about using Refworks. The workshops, which
are being held at the FHS IT lab, are scheduled between Monday, 11 April and Friday, 15 April,
2011. The same invitation has been extended to academic members of staff of the Medicine and
Surgery and Dentistry.
FHS Academic members of staff who are interest to attend one of the training workshops have
been invited to contact Mr Silvio Cortis, Head of Reader Services, University of Malta Library
Services, at silvio.cortis@um.edu.mt Tel: 2340 2010.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Removal of Numerus Clausus for prospective Nursing Students, Oct 2011
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The Department of Nursing, within the Faculty of Health Sciences, has announced that it will be
removing the limit on the number of students that will be admitted to the Preparatory Course for
Diploma in Health Science Nursing Studies and to the Degree course programme, B.Sc. (Hons.)
in Nursing as from October 2011.
This has been made possible by a
series of initiatives over the past four
years which were planned to
gradually increase the capacity of the
Department of Nursing in terms of
the number of students that could be
admitted,
whilst
concomitantly
maintaining the high quality of the
educational
programmes.
Such
measures included the recruitment of
Training sessions for prospective nurses – Venue FHS Labs
additional qualified lecturers, and the
training of over 300 mentors across a
wide variety of practice placements, who are now able to teach and assess students in the clinical
area; agreements with the private health care sector for placement of students; and development
of guided study packs to aid students in areas such as maternity and child care, where clinical
placements are limited. This exercise has resulted in the gradual increase in the number of
students admitted to direct entry nursing programmes, from a limit of 30 students to the diploma
programme in 2006 to 50 in 2007 and 2008 to a limit of 140 in 2009 and 2010, which was
further increased to admit the 165 and 170 eligible applicants respectively. This substantial
increase has effectively meant that all applicants with the required entry qualifications were
admitted in 2009 and 2010, thus not requiring the application of the numerus clausus.
First level nursing programmes have been run at the University of Malta since 1988, when the
first cohort of students were admitted to the B.Sc. Nursing programmes and since then there have
been 444 graduates with a B.Sc. in Nursing and 650 diploma holders. The Department of
Nursing also offers a direct entry degree course in Mental Health Nursing with the aim of
preparing specialist nurses in this field and the first students from this programme will be
graduating in November 2012. The Department of Nursing is also actively involved in Erasmus
programmes with strong links with several leading European universities.
The Department of Nursing, moreover, offers a large array of post-qualification and postgraduate programmes to qualified nurses with the aim of improving the knowledge and skills of
the nursing workforce. These include a B.Sc. in Mental Health Nursing for qualified nurses,
undergraduate certificates in specialist areas such as accident and emergency nursing, care of the
elderly, child care, oncology and rehabilitation, an online B.Sc. in Health Science programme for
qualified health care professionals and a Master of Science degree in Nursing and Mental Health
Nursing. There are about 560 students enrolled with the Department of Nursing, this academic
year.
The programmes of study offered by the Department of Nursing have been acknowledged to be
of the highest standard on a European and international setting.
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