RCH Education Hub

The RCH Education Hub is the online learning platform of The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, built for healthcare professionals working in pediatrics and their continuing professional development. It is a learner product: a catalog of courses, webinar series, podcasts and learning packages that clinicians enroll in one at a time. The site says the platform is managed by The Education Hub, while the courses themselves are developed by various teams from the Melbourne Children's Campus, and that the Education Hub is supported by the RCH Foundation. The hospital is on Flemington Road in Parkville, Victoria, and the onsite courses run at the hospital itself.

The site is explicit about who the platform is not for. A note for parents explains that it was purpose-built for health professionals, and points families looking for health information about their child to the hospital's Kids Health Info pages instead. Learners log in or create an account, manage their enrollments under My courses, browse everything in the Course library, and follow session dates in a calendar.

What the catalog covers

The course library is organized into Featured Courses, Clinical Paediatrics, Courses by invitation, the Education Hub Outreach Program, MCHN (maternal and child health nursing), Past events, PIPER Education Resources, Podcasts, Professional development, Research, Resuscitation, Testing and Simulation. The home page lists the newest offerings, and they show the range well.

Nurses have the most choice. The Paediatric Health Education MCHN program, in its 2026-27 edition, connects maternal and child health nurses (including MCH students) with RCH clinicians through monthly live webinars, a community of practice forum and supporting resources. The School Nurse Program 2026 follows the same model for school nurses over 12 months; the site calls it the inaugural edition and notes that it targets children's health care in the school setting rather than first aid training. Perioperative nurses get two in-person days. The Advanced Paediatric Perioperative Skills Day mixes lectures with workshop and skill stations on anaphylaxis, anesthesia emergencies, laryngospasm case studies and simulation. Foundations of Paediatric PACU and Anaesthetics 2026 covers pediatric anesthesia, the unexpected difficult airway, emergence delirium, family-centered care and observations, for nurses who have just started caring for children in a perioperative setting.

Allied health staff have Navigating Acute Paediatric Respiratory Care, a two-part physiotherapy lecture series. Webinar 1 covers respiratory assessment and management in typically developing children, including age-specific considerations and clinical red flags; Webinar 2 applies those skills to children with severe neurological impairment and neuromuscular disorders. It is aimed at physiotherapists in acute pediatric settings, experienced clinicians with limited pediatric exposure, and community clinicians supporting children with neuro-disability. The Interprofessional Paediatric Webinar Series, part of the Education Hub Outreach Program, is designed to connect the hospital with allied health professionals in regional areas and community practice, and comes with recordings, an online chat forum and resources.

For doctors and mixed teams, Paediatric Metabolic Medicine Made Practical is a one-day introduction to recognizing inherited metabolic disorders: when to consider a metabolic diagnosis, the newborn screening program, choosing investigations, metabolic emergencies, how specialist teams support care, and the lived experience of families. It is pitched at pediatricians, trainees, emergency clinicians, nurses and dietitians early in their exposure to the field. The "Child Development, Behaviour and Mental Health" series runs eight lectures between March and November 2026 for developmental-behavioral pediatricians, GPs, psychologists, speech and occupational therapists, social workers and school educators. Victorian Paediatric Trauma Management is an online learning package from the hospital's Trauma Service for nurses, doctors and paramedics in Victoria who receive injured children. It is expected preparation for the service's face-to-face outreach programs; learners outside Victoria are welcome, with a caution that it reflects Victorian systems.

Dietitians have the Unit 1 Certificate in Paediatric Nutrition and Dietetics, open only to qualified dietitians. The hospital's Department of Nutrition and Food Services began this certificate in 1997. Unit 1 covers growth and nutritional assessment, breastfeeding and solids, infant formula, toddler nutrition and fussy eating, common infant gastrointestinal disorders, feeding children with a disability, enteral feeding, food allergies, and public health topics such as childhood obesity. Candidates need a graduate or postgraduate qualification in dietetics and email evidence of it at registration.

Lead with Impact is the one course outside clinical care: a leadership day for emerging and current leaders in education, research, healthcare and other sectors, with a panel of experienced leaders, leadership frameworks, building psychologically safe teams, emotional intelligence, and tools for conflict.

The platform also lists Graduate Study in Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, which the site describes as "Australia's only postgraduate course in Adolescent Health and Wellbeing", delivered by the hospital's Centre for Adolescent Health with the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children's Research Institute. Study for that course happens on the University of Melbourne LMS rather than this platform, and the site states it is an accredited University of Melbourne postgraduate award course (Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma or Masters).

Formats, recordings and CPD hours

Delivery runs three ways. Online courses are live Zoom webinars; onsite days take place at the hospital; some, like the metabolic medicine day, run onsite and over Zoom at once. The two perioperative days are in person only and not recorded. Where an event is recorded, enrollment includes access to the recording for 90 days, and the School Nurse Program keeps its webinar recordings available for 3 months after the program finishes. The dietetics certificate is a paper-free event, with resources posted to the platform a week before it starts.

Every listing states its CPD points in hours. The respiratory webinars carry 3 hours each; the leadership, metabolic and PACU days 6 hours; the perioperative skills day 7 hours; the MCHN and School Nurse programs 10 hours. The child development series is self-reported at 10 education hours. The dietetics course is approximately 24 CPD hours, plus non-contact hours to complete an assessment task. On most courses learners either self-record the hours attended in their CPD log or receive a certificate on completion, and the respiratory webinars, the PACU day and the perioperative skills day state that a certificate is provided. The trauma package carries no CPD points.

Prices and enrollment

Each course is priced on its own listing, mostly including GST:

• Navigating Acute Paediatric Respiratory Care webinars, $50 each
• MCHN program and School Nurse Program, $165 each
• Paediatric Metabolic Medicine Made Practical, $220 onsite or $165 virtual
• Foundations of Paediatric PACU and Anaesthetics, $220 including course materials, certificate, parking and catering
• Advanced Paediatric Perioperative Skills Day, $270
• Child development series, $350 including live attendance, previous lectures, slides and supplementary materials
• Lead with Impact, $595 early bird or $750 standard
• Unit 1 Certificate in Paediatric Nutrition and Dietetics, $1100 plus GST for the 4-day course
• Victorian Paediatric Trauma Management and the Interprofessional Paediatric Webinar Series, free

Onsite registration fees include morning tea, lunch and parking. The graduate adolescent health course works differently: its cost varies by award and study load, and the site mentions FEE-HELP and scholarships. Refund eligibility on each listing points to section 8.2 of the platform's Terms of Use.

Enrollment has firm deadlines. Each listing gives a closing time, and anyone who enrolls after it will not get the Zoom link by email; the link appears on the course page at least two days before the session. After enrolling, learners receive email communications and are asked to check their junk folder. Questions and feedback go to education.hub@rch.org.au, and some courses list their own team address, such as physiotherapy.courses@rch.org.au for the respiratory series and nutrition.education@rch.org.au for dietetics. Course materials are the hospital's intellectual property and may not be reproduced without written permission.

Who it suits

The RCH Education Hub suits clinicians who work with children and want CPD from the teams who treat them at the Royal Children's Hospital: maternal and child health nurses and school nurses who want a year of monthly contact with RCH clinicians and peers, perioperative nurses building pediatric skills, physiotherapists handling pediatric respiratory referrals, dietitians moving into pediatrics, and allied health staff in regional practice who can join the free outreach webinars. Fees from $50 and the free trauma package make it easy to try a single session.

It suits less well anyone after an on-demand library to work through at leisure. Most offerings are scheduled events with fixed dates, recordings expire after 90 days, and several skills days are in person only in Melbourne. The trauma package is built around Victorian systems, and clinicians outside pediatrics will find little here beyond the leadership day.