Dr. Kaye Mehta, Senior lecturer and Topic Coordinator for Community/Public Health Placements spent a busy week in November visiting Singapore placement sites. Professor Michelle Miller and Jolene Thomas followed in March representing the courses at the ‘Studying in Australia Fair’, visiting colleagues and helping to host the Flinders University Health Sciences Alumni Event on March 8^th. Read more about our Singaporean Alumni!

Kaye met with existing placement sites to de-brief previous placements and plan for new placements in 2015. She also visited new sites to clarify placement expectations. The Singapore placement program is growing with five existing providers and three new providers.  In order to support Placement Educators, Kaye ran 2 workshops, on ‘Engaging communities in nutrition programs’ and ‘Assessing students on placement and fostering reflexivity’.  The workshops were well attended and received positive feedback such as: ‘the most valuable aspect of today’s workshop was …listening to each other’s experiences and experts in community nutrition practice; very beneficial!’; and ‘encourage reflection by students and also our own reflection as practitioners.’ Finally, Kaye presented two lectures to students at Singapore Polytechnic on ‘Nutrition and dietetics at Flinders’ and ‘community nutrition practice’. Kaye felt warmly welcomed by her Singaporean colleagues and valued the opportunity to strengthen the relationship with dietitians who teach into the N&D program through placements.

Earlier this month Michelle Miller and Jolene Thomas attended the School of Health Sciences Alumni Event in Singapore which was very well attended by graduates of Nutrition and Dietetics at Flinders from 2005 to 2015. It was a great opportunity to network and find out what our graduates have been doing. The SoHS is hoping to hold further alumni events in Singapore in the future.  Michelle and Jolene also visited sites that host our Singapore students for final year placements and attended the IDP Study in Australia and New Zealand Education Fair along with other SoHS staff members to market our programs. Flinders Nutrition and Dietetics look forward to continuing to strengthen relationships with colleagues in Singapore and in 2015 are excited to be sending at least 3 Australian students on short term placements to both National University Hospital and National University Singapore.