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01 March 2023 | Story Alicia Pienaar
Prof Mathys Labuschagne
Prof Mathys Labuschagne is the Head of the Clinical Simulation and Skills Unit within the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Faculty of Health Sciences

The Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Prof Gert van Zyl, invites you to the inaugural lecture of Prof Mathys Labuschagne, Head of the Clinical Simulation and Skills Unit within the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Faculty of Health Sciences. 

Subject: Clinical Simulation: Quo Vadis? 
Venue:  Auditorium, Equitas Building, Bloemfontein Campus 
Date: 8 March 2023 
Time: 17:30 

RSVP on or before Friday 3 March 2023

Light refreshments will be served after the inaugural lecture.


About Prof M Labuschagne

Prof Mathys Labuschagne is the Head of the Clinical Simulation and Skills Unit within the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Free State. He completed his MB ChB degree and qualified as an ophthalmologist in 2006.

He developed an interest in health professions education and obtained a PhD in Health Professions Education in June 2012. The title of his thesis was: Clinical Simulation to enhance undergraduate medical education and training at the University of the Free State.

Prof Labuschagne was appointed Head of the Clinical Simulation and Skills Unit at the University of the Free State. The facility is utilised for undergraduate and postgraduate clinical simulation training, as well as interprofessional training and research. He has a special interest in simulation as training tool, precision skills training, and mastery of learning and simulation as tool to prepare students for interprofessional education and collaborative practice.

Prof Labuschagne is part of a multi-institutional consortium that developed the MySkills Medic app. It is a clinical procedural skills application aimed at graduating medical students, interns, and community-service doctors. He was appointed as a member of the Ophthalmology Foundation Education Simulation Subcommittee (affiliate of the International Council of Ophthalmology) tasked with developing a white paper to guide simulation training for ophthalmologists. He is involved in postgraduate supervision for master’s and PhD students in HPE.


News Archive

IRSJ marks five years of championing social justice
2016-08-12

Description: IRSJ 5 year Tags: IRSJ 5 year

Members of the Advisory Board of the IRSJ,
Prof Michalinos Zembylas (Open University
of Cyprus), Prof Shirley Anne Tate (Leeds
University, England), and Prof Relebohile
Moletsane (University of KwaZulu-Natal),
listen to a speaker on the programme.
Photo: Lihlumelo Toyana

The Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice (IRSJ) marked its fifth anniversary with a function on 27 July 2016 in the Reitz Hall of the Centenary Complex on the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS). Earlier that day, the Advisory Board of the IRSJ, chaired by Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS, hosted their annual meeting.

A new book was also launched, co-authored by JC van der Merwe, Deputy-Director at the IRSJ and Dionne van Reenen, researcher and PhD candidate at the IRSJ. It is entitled Transformation and Legitimation in Post-apartheid Universities: Reading Discourses from ‘Reitz’. The function featured not only reflections on the IRSJ, but a four-member panel discussion of the book and higher education in 2016.

The IRSJ came into being officially at the UFS in January 2011. Prof André Keet, Director of the IRSJ, said: “With a flexibility and trust not easily found in the higher education sector, the university management gave us the latitude and support to fashion an outfit that responds to social life within and outside the borders of the university, locally and globally.”

The IRSJ has not hesitated to be bold and
courageous in reforming ... traditional policies."

 

Prof Jansen went on to mention three things he finds appealing about the IRSJ: “Thanks to Prof Keet and his team’s vision and understanding of how important it is for students to have a space in which they can learn how to be, learn how to think, and learn how to contribute, the IRSJ has become a place where students can learn about things that they might not learn in the classroom. Second, it created, for the first time, a space where members of the LGBTIQ community could gather in one place. And third, it speaks to the intellectual life of the university, as evidenced by the research and publications produced over the past few years.”

Prof Jansen added: “The IRSJ will only be successful to the extent that we have safe spaces, courageous spaces, in which not only black students talk to themselves, but where black and white students talk together about their difficulties. If you’re entangled, you can’t get out of [that] unless you speak to the other person.”

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Prof Michalinos Zembylas of the Open University of Cyprus and member of the Advisory Board, said of the IRSJ: “The works produced by the institute in this short time have been valuable to this community and beyond, because they recognise the complexities of education, ... while pushing the boundaries of how to translate theoretical discussions into practical, everyday conditions. ... For example, the IRSJ has not hesitated to be bold and courageous in reforming some traditional policies in this university—remnants of an ambivalent past that reproduced inequality and disadvantage.

In reflecting on how the IRSJ came into being during her opening remarks, Dr Lis Lange, Vice-Rector: Academic at the UFS, said that it has always been “dedicated to transformation.” She added that it “gathered the energy and creativity of some of our most promising student leaders.” She concluded: “For me, the greatest success of the Institute, besides publications and local and international networks, is the fact that something that started in the margins is being asked today to come closer to the centre, to play a larger role in the structural transformation of the university.”

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