One of the favoured lines of my mother’s wisdom is that, as our species evolved, things became much more complicated when we stopped laying eggs! This was then usually followed with an uncomfortably detailed description of what having four children can do.

The theme for this winter edition of O&G Magazine is Urogynaecology. Though represented as a college subspecialty, this is an area of our profession that overlaps or underpins many others, as is particularly evident when we look at some of the topics covered in this Winter edition, from ultrasound in pelvic assessment to pelvic floor muscles to fistula and injectables.

The Australian Birth Trauma Association will outline their advocacy for prebirth education and pelvic floor awareness and following years of ongoing controversy, very bad publicity, legal proceedings, and government enquiries, we also have updates on mesh, credentialling and pelvic pain.

It has been an extremely busy year for our RANZCOG team. Thanks must go to all College staff, Fellows and members who have dedicated so much time and effort to our once-in-a-decade Australian Medical Council and Medical Council of New Zealand reaccreditation process. The volume of work required in formulating our submissions and preparing for the upcoming site visits is truly exceptional.

More broadly, the College has taken the initiative to plan and move quickly to commence construction of an examination centre on two floors of our six-storey ‘Djeembana’, College Place, in Melbourne.

This infrastructure investment will future-proof our assessment capability by allowing us to conduct examinations in house. We’ll also save considerable money on what we have been paying commercial providers and potentially, by charging other educational organisations to use our facility, gain the College another ongoing income stream to support member services.
RANZCOG is reinforcing its international efforts and Memoranda of Understanding with upcoming visits to Malaysia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka by College delegations. President-elect Dr Gill Gibson recently represented RANZCOG at the American College of O and G conference in Baltimore, and I will be speaking at the Canadian conference in Ottawa and Royal College conference i London in the next few weeks. Then it’s to Rotorua for the Aotearoa New Zealand
conference.

We’re looking to the upcoming Sydney symposium in July and the organising committee for our own RANZCOG annual scientific meeting to be held in Perth in late October have also been working hard to prepare for what will be a great event.

Take care, keep safe (and warm) this winter, and please enjoy this issue of your O&G Magazine.