On October 25th 2017 as part of the National Conference for Practice Managers, UNE Partnerships celebrated the recent graduation of the latest cohort of our Professional Practice Manager Development Program at The Crown Conference Centre, Crown Perth.

Friends, family, senior UNE Partnership staff and our partners from the Australian Association of Practice Management (AAPM) were all on hand to help us applaud the graduates for their achievements.

Colleen Sullivan, OAM, awarded 4 students the distinguished Barbara Meredith Award of Excellence, including Madeline Jammal and Karen Campbell. Runners Up, Chelsea Koelmayer, Vicki Philips, Dawn Hutchinson, and Karen Cuneen were all presented with Awards of Merit. Anne Davis, Academic Director of Practice for UNE Partnerships was on hand to present Certificates to our graduates.

Diploma of Professional Practice Leadership

Diane Baxter

Jacqueline Brandner

Kelly Ubanski

Madeline Jammal

Karen Cunneen

Karen Campbell

Vicki Phillips

Samantha Walker

Diane Baxter

Bek Hooley

Laura Robinson

Dawn Hutchinson

Veronika Lund

Chelsea KoelMeyer

Tina Cutri

Hayley Riley

Certificate IV in Business

Melinda Wrigley

Barbara Meredith Memorial Award Recipients – Diploma level

Karen Campbell and Madeline Jammel

Barbara Meredith Memorial Award Recipients – Certificate level

Rachel Bruce and Satvir Kaur

Celebrating a strong and collaborative 30-year relationship, UNE Partnerships and AAPM enjoyed a formal function at Beumonde on the Point in Perth on October 23. With a view of the beautiful Swan River, UNE Partnerships Board members, alumni, staff and students celebrated the anniversary milestone with the AAPM Board and members. The dinner was attended by over 50 guests, including guest of honour the Hon. Roger Cook MLA, Minister for Health and Mental Health in Western Australia.

Other distinguished guests included Gail O’Brien from Lighthouse foundation, members of the AAPM and UNEP Boards, alumni and current students. Two indigenous scholarships were awarded by the Minister to Michael Cook and Derise Jones of Geraldton Regional Aboriginal Medical Service.

The night included many tributes to AAPM and UNE Partnerships. Gary Smith discussed the shared history of AAPM and UNEP, while Colleen Sullivan spoke about the future of the relationship. The Minister then addressed the importance of Primary care, before Anne Davis spoke about the Practice program, the flexibility and quality of the program, and the UNE Partnerships indigenous programs within.

The final speaker of the evening was Karen Campbell, an enthusiastic graduate of the Diploma of Professional Practice Leadership. Karen delivered a wonderfully heart-warming and positive speech on completing the qualification and the benefits for herself, her practice, and her family who supported her study.

Gary Smith is a medical practice manager with more than 30 years’ experience.

​As well as managing a 10-doctor general practice in Western Sydney, he also finds the time to sit on six boards and consult within the Health industry.

As an experienced medical practice manager, I’ve learnt a lot over the past 30 years about how to achieve success in my field and four key steps stand out as key to such success:

Empowering others

It’s important to lift yourself out of the day-to-day operations of a health practice by empowering other people to do some of the operational work for you.  When you do this, you free up your time to focus on the big picture and ensure the practice is meeting its business objectives.

​Adopting a leadership style focused around an empowerment process helps build trust in your relationships with other staff and allows the practice to flourish when you are not there. ​

Sharing what you know

I’m a great believer in the idea that the knowledge I’ve gained is not for me to keep. Knowledge is only as valuable as the number of people I can share it with because sharing such knowledge empowers others.

​Ongoing education and training is also a great motivator for people and allows them feel they are developing their individual skills while contributing to a thriving practice. ​

Delivering learning in diverse ways

It’s important to remember that people learn in different ways. For people to get the most out of their education and training, it needs to be delivered in a variety of ways, via different modalities, so that everyone can get the most out of the learning.

​To feel comfortable at work and perform to the best of their ability, people also need resources and tools to support them in their roles, along with a framework that recognises the value of educating and training them.  Practices that employ an education and training framework have been shown to create more motivated staff which in turn leads to higher staff retention and higher productivity.

Developing a learning culture

As you can see, building a learning culture within an organisation is paramount to its success. Such a culture can focus on formal learning based around roles and structures, or adopt a more informal approach to education and training. And remember that to create a successful learning culture within an organisation, you’ve got to start from the top down, meaning that the people leading the organisation must be on board.  It’s about taking the time to identify what skill sets are required for a practice to flourish and then taking that learning strategy and making it real through the delivery of different forms of training.

he CEO Institute and UNE Partnerships, the not-for-profit education and training company of the University of New England, are proud to launch the Certified CEO Program.

As the only professional recognition program for CEOs, the Program is a unique offering for current and aspiring business leaders. Delivered online, it’s also available globally.

The Institute commissioned UNE Partnerships to develop a contemporary, globally relevant course designed for business leaders here and overseas. Certified CEO designation is a mark of distinction and respect, setting the new gold standard in Global Leadership.

Chairman of The CEO Institute Kenneth Gunn said UNE Partnerships was the ideal collaborator to develop and deliver the Certified CEO Program.

“UNE Partnerships is able to draw directly on the experience and expertise of Australia’s leading online educator the University of New England. The University has been a pioneer of distance education for almost 70 years, and the Business School has the globally focused mind set we needed,” said Mr Gunn.

Tim Catterall, CEO of UNE Partnerships said that to meet the requirements of The CEO Institute, “UNE Partnerships has collaborated with the University of New England to curate content from a variety of sources distilling it into a relevant, contextualised, and accessible online training program for this specific cohort.”

“This opportunity presents an exciting platform for us to showcase our capabilities in digital education with academic rigour across geographies. The program will continually evolve to ensure its relevance to education of executives to meet the challenges of career progression in a dynamic international business market,” said Mr Catterall.