The Fifth National Conference of the South African Association of Health Educationalists (SAAHE) took place June 21-23, 2012, in the central South African city of Bloemfontein. As in previous years, Fellows and faculty from the Southern Africa-FAIMER Regional Institute (SAFRI) made significant contributions. Of the 129 presentations in the parallel sessions, 32 oral and 20 poster presentations (approximately 40% of the total) were made by Fellows or faculty members. There were an additional 35 co-authorships and six chaired sessions by FAIMER Fellows. The SAFRI program requires all second-year Fellows to submit an abstract of their education innovation project to SAAHE for a proposed poster or oral presentation. All of these submissions were accepted by the conference.
FAIMER faculty member Janet Grant of CenMedic in the United Kingdom was the FAIMER-sponsored invited speaker. She delivered two inspiring plenary addresses: “Apprenticeship in the Era of Confidence” and “Working and Learning in the Service—Managing Continuing Professional Development.” Dr. Grant also conducted a conference workshop on diagnostic thinking.
Once again SAFRI Fellows were prominent in the poster prizes with Lakshini McNamee (SAFRI 2009), who was advised by SAFRI Co-Director Juanita Bezuidenhout (PHIL 2005), and Paula Barnard-Ashton (SAFRI 2011), who was advised by FAIMER faculty member Di Manning (PHIL 2008), named as the two runners-up.
The conference ended with an invitation from Veena Singaram to attend the sixth national SAAHE meeting in June 2013. Dr. Singaram is chair of the organizing committee and yet another FAIMER Fellow (SAFRI 2008).
