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NETHERLANDS

General

The document on the future of general practice has been accepted by The Dutch College and The Dutch Association of GP/FM. Based on this document new priorities will have to be set, both politically as well as regarding education.

As a shortage of GP's is on the way, there is an urgent need to speed up the process of delegation, so patient list-size can be increased (2500 up to 3500/4000?).

Basic Medical Education

Several schools are setting up a new curriculum with more direct patient contacts in earlier years. It is, however, becoming much more difficult to consolidate the participation of GP's trained in education.

The reorganisation of educational programmes according to the Bachelor-Masters structure is now in process for almost all studies, except medicine. For the time being it will remain a six-year course.

Within a year we will probably see the first experiments with the Bachelor-Masters structure in medicine.

Postgraduate Training (no new developments since the last report)

The GP training is a national programme, but executed by the 8 departments of general practice. Each department has its own “couleur locale”.

In this area a lot of innovation is also planned and in preparation. New is the emphasis on learning the practice and a more individual (tailor made) curriculum for the trainees. A portfolio system will be made for the use of assessment. Another new element is “differentiation” (sports medicine, ophthalmology, management, research, education, etc.). In due course a connection with the Higher Professional Training Programme will be established.

There are a lot more GP's needed, than there are in training at the moment. The interest in GP-training seems to level. There are encouraging signs.

The challenge is to keep the curriculum in line with the developments in health care.

CME/HPT

The departments of general practice get more involvement in the accreditation of their own programmes.

The Higher Professional Training programme (HPT) gradually gets on a structural and national position. Recently a training programme in palliative care started with the participation of 50 GP's. Other programmes will follow.

The Invitational Conference on HPE in Utrecht was well received. The report of the meeting is not yet ready.

Health Care

There is silence in the air, but specialists in university hospitals will probably go on a one-day strike. They demand that an agreed salary will be met, although the government will not provide the money to the hospitals.

The GP field is relatively quiet, but there is a lot of discussion on the contracts with the healthcare funds that will expire by the end of the year

Report of the European Network of Teaching Cancer Care in General Practice
Bernardina Wanrooij

Preceding the WONCA London meeting, nine members of the ENTCCGP who participated in the WONCA discussed the future of our Network. Until recently the Network could exist because of grants of the EU, linked to country projects in the field of teaching cancer care. When these projects were finished, the organisation of the Network collapsed.

One of the members proposed a pragmatic solution for the network to survive. By attending meetings of an organisation called PAIN, who need GP input in their project, we could meet as network members ourselves during one day a year. A second meeting could be organised during future WONCA conferences.

Although many of the individual members are involved in palliative care, the group decided to go on as a cancer care teaching network in primary care, aiming at truly educational areas, attending not only to palliative care, but also to the rest of the cancer journey.

Despite the good will and the above options mentioned, the future of this Network can probably only be guaranteed if one of the members takes up the task to keep the group going. Because of the full schedule of all people involved, I am not to optimistic about this.