euract: european academy of teachers in general practice and family medicine
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Communication and information 193
student education, cardiovascular diseases, prevention, neurological and mental disorders and medical care)— provoked a lot of discussion. The poster prize was won by P. Nabbe, J. Y. Le Reste, A. Le Prielec and others with a poster titled: ‘Depression and multimorbidity in family medicine: Systematic literature review: What validated tools are used to screen or diagnose depression in gen-eral practice?’ A new parallel session was the ‘methodol-ogy session’, in which senior researchers gave feedback on project ideas that were ‘in development’.
EGPRN meetings are also an opportunity for several collaborative groups to meet, after or before the official conference programme. In Ljubljana, the Womanpower project, the FPDM group (Family practice depression and multimorbidity) and the group for research on electronic medical records had their group meetings. It is a tradition of EGPRN that participants can visit local colleagues on Friday evening. The Community Health Centre Ljubljana and some private contractors opened their doors, and many participants enjoyed the look behind the scenes of Ljubljana’s primary health care. Thanks to the beautiful weather, everyone could enjoy each other’s company dur-ing the long evenings on the terraces of the bars and res-taurants in the centre of Ljubljana. We are sure that a lot of professional enthusiasm for research in family medicine and cooperation between countries has been shared.
Davorina Petek member of the EGPRN Executive Board
Marija Petek Šter National representative of Slovenia
patient-friendly. The workshop consisted of two parts. In the first part, existing training programmes on quality and several topics on quality improvement in continuous medical education were presented. The afternoon focused on how to asses quality improvement learning.
Traditionally, one or two keynote speakers opened each day. Professor Igor Švab presented the development of General Practice as an academic discipline in Slovenia. He stressed the need for international collaboration in building research capacity. He described the careful development of a GP teaching curriculum using a variety of teaching methods, which resulted in a leading position in teaching at the medical faculty. The keynote lecture of Professor Janko Kersnik was a reflective speech on the importance of comprehensive patient management, which should be accounted for in education on all levels and in research projects. Finally, Professor Michel Wensing gave an excel-lent overview of research topics and research methods in quality improvement research, which aims to identify inter-ventions and factors, associated with effective changes in the process and outcomes of healthcare.
Several thematic papers were presented on quality out-comes, instrument development for quality assessment, systematic approach to chronic disease management, interventions for quality improvement, issues on patients’ safety and educational programmes for patients. The discussion of all presentations was lively and construc-tive, giving presenters comments on how to continue their research or feedback on their presentation. As always, the EGPRN poster sessions—six groups of five posters grouped by different themes (multimorbidity,
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EURACT: EURopEAN ACAdEmy of TEAChERs iN GENERAl pRACTiCE ANd fAmily mEdiCiNE
A need for an exchange on medical education between fm/Gp stakeholders in Europe
ISSN 1381-4788 print/ISSN 1751-1402 online © 2012 Informa HealthcareDOI: 10.3109/13814788.2012.708333
European family medicine/general practice (FM/GP) has travelled a long and successful journey of profiling the discipline and has produced valuable position papers on education and research. However, the turmoil inherent to the medical field—with its sub-specialization and educa-tional and research self-centredness—has touched also European FM/GP. Looking behind the curtains of the podium disputes, we can identify three major risk factors for future stagnancy in the development of European FM/GP.
Lack of common goals. This threat can be identified 1. on the international level as differences between countries in terms of size, health care system, posi-tion of FM/GP and the development of FM/GP. It is also seen inside individual countries where every-body in FM/GP is busy with his/her own institution, organization or project.Diversification of the objectives. On the international 2. level, one can observe this in the multitude of formal
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194 Communication and information
of the department are exposed to pressure of deans who usually benchmark his/her own medical school with one which he/she picks up. It might happen that in that par-ticular university FM/GP will not be in an optimal posi-tion.
The position of FM/GP is under heavy debates and financial pressure. To turn threats into opportunities, EURACT proposes a project to establish and facilitate collaboration within the academic sphere of FM/GP and between universities and clinical preceptors (tutors, trainers, coaches, supervisors, mentors) for FM/GP in Europe. Such a project would provide a sound platform to support sustainability of GP/FM’s great achievements in the future. The objectives are:
Networking and collaboration in basic medical • education (BME)Platform for the exchange of the curricula, • programmes, projects in undergraduate and post-graduate educationPromotion of common family medicine content and •context in Medical Schools’ curriculaCore family medicine curricula for BME•Network for students and teachers exchange•Teaching agenda for undergraduate education•Quality improvement of undergraduate and post-•graduate teachingInnovative approaches in undergraduate and post-•graduate teachingResearch in postgraduate education•Teaching the teachers courses•Support to less developed departments/medical •schoolsCollaboration with other Wonca networks, SIGs and •different regional networks
Janko Kersnik President of EURACT
and informal networks and special interest groups—all striving for justified particular FM/GP objectives—with little or no cohesion seen. The same happens within national contexts. On the one hand, societies and colleges fight for an appropriate position of FM/GP within the national health services, empha-sizing financial aspects and mandatory specialty training in FM/GP; on the other hand, university FM/GP faculties are busy working with students, protect-ing their own position within a tough university environment, caring for own staff development.Asymmetric power distribution. Wonca Europe is a 3. big organization with acceptable budget but little important projects of its own, relying mainly on the networks and special interest groups, which sometimes pursuit their own goals, which are not necessarily always in line with Wonca Europe mission. Identical problems can be found within individual countries. In developed countries, hid-den, or overt struggles can be seen between prac-titioners, professional organizations, regulatory bodies, universities, etcetera, and in less devel-oped countries development of academic usually falls back in confrontation with the struggle for financial recognition for FM/GP work.
Alternatively, the level of the ‘development’ of the dis cipline in Europe is mainly measured through the successes of few countries. This puts less developed countries—and those not able to promote or adequately measure their devel-opment—on the rim of the spinning development of FM/GP in the world. In addition, it exposes the whole discipline to the threat of individual universities tempt-ing to squeeze out departments of FM/GP and replace them by more ‘scientifically productive’ medical speci-alities, leading to even more sub-specialized curricula and less comprehensive and holistic education. We have to take into account that without a clear and strong posi-tion of the FM/GP profession regarding the content and objectives of FM/GP teaching in medical schools, heads
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ipCRG: iNTERNATioNAl pRimARy CARE REspiRAToRy GRoUp
Varied messages
ISSN 1381-4788 print/ISSN 1751-1402 online © 2012 Informa HealthcareDOI: 10.3109/13814788.2012.708730
BI-ANNUAL CONGRESS APRIL 2012 EDINBURGH
The IPCRG held an extraordinarily successful bi-annual congress in Edinburgh from 25–29 April 2012. This was
a truly international meeting with representation by 1000 delegates from over 40 countries. The congress was really primary care oriented dealing with not only
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