Inaugural Dr Mark Craig Bursary awarded to dedicated rural College staff member

The Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM) would like to extend its thanks to Life Fellow Dr Mark Craig for his generous donation in creating a bursary to further the professional development of College staff.

The bursary was announced on Friday night at the Rural Medicine Australia 2018 conference in Darwin as part of the official Conference Dinner. The dinner also played host to the ACRRM and Rural Doctors Association Australia (RDAA) Excellence Awards for students, junior doctors and GPs to celebrate their commitment to rural medicine.  

Inaugural recipient Jane Connolly was awarded the bursary to continue her studies in health informatics for her role in promoting and maintaining systems for eHealth and telehealth as part of the Quality and Safety team.

Dr Craig donated funds for the bursary in recognition of the hard work that staff at the College complete each day to support our rural and remote doctors.

“Last year when I was awarded Life Fellowship, I decided to give something back to the College,” said Dr Craig.

“The bursary is to encourage high quality employees to join the ranks of the true believers in rural medicine.

“ACRRM has become a strong, successful organisation in part due to the calibre of staff we appointed initially, some of who are still with the College. That longevity of service helped us overcome the barriers put in our way as we established ourselves.

“Now that we’re a bigger, stronger organisation, it’s time to give back. It’s about supporting staff to stay with the College over the longer term, like our CEO Marita, who has been there since the beginning.

“My proudest achievement as a founding Fellow of ACRRM is the high-quality staff we appointed in those early days, all of them true believers in the rural medicine cause. That’s my motivation for creating the bursary. I want to reinforce the legacy of support that I and the others who founded ACRRM got from our foundation staff.”

The inaugural recipient, Jane Connolly, has worked for the College for over four years. Her role sees her working closely with the College Digital Health Committee to ensure that best-practice eHealth and telehealth advice is given to College members.

“Being awarded the Dr Mark Craig Bursary is such an honour,” said Ms Connolly.

“Everyone at the College is passionate about rural health, and we show that by helping our registrars and Fellows develop the skills they need to be a better doctor and service their local community – the use of health data and digital technology in everyday practice is just one part of that.

“I plan to use the bursary to upskill and increase my knowledge in the field of health informatics, so that we as a College can be better equipped to provide digital health advice to members in an increasingly-technology driven profession.

“My thanks go out to Dr Craig for initiating this program for staff and recognising the work we do to keep this College moving forward.”

The Dr Craig Bursary will be awarded to one ACRRM staff member each year in October.