Winners: (From left) Guests at the SAAHE conference included Dr Dawn Ernstzen (Stellenbosch), Dr Peter Clarke-Farr (CPUT), Prof Debbie Murdoch Eaton (Leeds), Prof David Taylor (Liverpool) and Dr Cynthia Sikakana (UCT).
 

Laudable though it may have been, the paper on the performance of academically at-risk students couldn't do it. Nor could the exemplary paper on effective clinical education in physiotherapy. Instead, it took a paper on a postgraduate education programme on diabetes to do it. Dr Peter Clarke-Farr of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) won the R10 000 prize for the best presentation at the third annual SAAHE Health Sciences Education Conference. His presentation, titled The Development of a Postgraduate Education and Training Programme for Health Care Workers for the Prevention and Management of the Ocular Complications in Diabetic Patients, beat off runners-up Dr Dawn Ernstzen from Stellenbosch University and Dr Vanessa Burch of UCT's Department of Medicine. This year, the conference was hosted by the University of the Western Cape. Although strictly a regional affair, this collaboration between the Western Cape's four universities under the aegis of the South African Association for Health Educationalists (SAAHE) provides a unique forum on the national scene for those with a passion for health sciences education. It also attracted guests and presentations from the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. International flavour was added by two guests who shared a wealth of ideas about how we might enrich our support of students in the health sciences - Professor David Taylor of the University of Liverpool and Professor Debbie Murdoch-Eaton of Leeds University. The range of presentations at the conference again highlighted the educational scholarship being nurtured by the province's institutions of health sciences education, said organisers. SAAHE will be taking this a step further this year, with the establishment of a quarterly inter-institutional journal club.

- Elmi Badenhorst