Associate Professor Sarah Olson (left) and Professor Yvonne Anderson travelled from Brisbane and Perth respectively to attend the Medical School 150th celebrations.
Travelling to the Otago Medical School’s 150th anniversary, from the East and West coasts of Australia, Associate Professor Sarah Olson and Professor Yvonne Anderson share memories of their Otago days.
Sarah is a neurosurgeon in Brisbane and the immediate past president of the Neurosurgery Society of Australasia. She was the past supervisor of neurosurgical training at Princess Alexandra Hospital for 10 years and is a Surgical Education and Training Board Member for Australasia.
Hailing from Hokitika, Sarah graduated in 1996 and it’s her first trip back to Dunedin.
“It’s just wonderful, I remember how much I really loved being here,” Sarah says.
“It was very dynamic, there were so many people doing different things, not just medicine, there was a lot of arts around. I used to love going to the plays and really enjoyed that it was a small university town with a lot of very bright minds from very different disciplines.”
She says she was delighted to get into Otago Medical School and remembers very fondly a lot of people she had known here.
“You form very close relationships because I think you’re all students, you’re all young, you’re all away from home.
“It’s a bit of a magic place in lots of ways.”
Yvonne is Professor of Community Child Health across Child and Adolescent Health Services, Curtin University, and The Kids Research Institute in Perth, Western Australia.
She is a clinician academic and her areas of focus include equitable community-based healthy lifestyle programmes for children and young people, health professional wellbeing and excellence within medical education. She graduated from Otago with a BSc in Psychology in 1996 and MBChB in 2000.
“It’s an absolute privilege to reflect on the Medical School’s history and learn about those who paved the way for us to enjoy the privilege we’ve had throughout our careers,” Yvonne says.
“I’ve especially enjoyed catching up with people who I haven’t seen for decades.”
She says Dunedin is a fantastic place to be a student and valued the connection with nature being so close by.
“I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to learn from very high calibre lecturers. Also having a medical education embedded in a real-world setting such as the hospital was amazing.”
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