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Council meeting - Madeira, Portugal, April 2004

Council Reports Contents

Annex 4
Reports of Standing Committees

EURACT Council meeting
April 21-24, 2004
Madeira, Portugal

Report of BME Committee

The BME committee met with 8 members in attendance including new council members attending for the first time. Two main issues were discussed. The first is the checklist for the preparation of practices for teaching. The document is complete. it will be circulated for council members for final comments and will be provided to participants of the first Leonardo course for comments from teachers “in the field”. We will then obtain EB approval and funding for publication and distribution of the document at the Amsterdam conference. Stefan Wilm is to be congratulated for taking the lead on this project. The second project discussed was teaching cross-cultural issues in medicine to medical students. The committee proposed producing a document to help teachers to incorporate cross-cultural issues in ordinary teaching encounters rather than creating a “stand-alone” teaching module on this topic. The upcoming Bled course this year will provide us with useful material. We propose a workshop for the Kos meeting on teaching cross-cultural medicine and will communicate by e-mail to exchange ideas for the structure and content of the workshop before the Aarhus meeting.

Yonah Yaphe MD

Report of CME Committee

Present: Jan Heyrman, Mladenka Vrcic-Keglevic, Iuliana Popa, Eva Jurgova, Samira Herenda, Bernardine Wanrooij,
Paula Vainiomäki (chair and reporter).

After a short presentation route, the tasks agreed in the Leicester meeting were looked through. Some of the tasks had been performed, but some not. CME group had earlier defined that CME/CPD means any and all the ways by which physicians learn and change their practice.

It was discussed who are the stakeholders of the CME committee's actions. Stakeholders were seen as all the persons, institutions, organisations etc. who could be against or forward the CPD committee's work. The group was able to identify a long list of stakeholders.

It was discussed, who needs the actions of CME group. Individual GPs? Teachers in family medicine connected with CPD issues? Policy makers? Finally, the group agreed the teachers to be the main beneficiary, but the group has at the same time to try to benefit individual GPs 1) through teachers and 2) through influence on strategic policy makers.

Problems were identified in different levels and they seemed to be diverse in different institutions and countries. Some examples of the problems: accreditation does not accept all learning methods, time for CPD is limited because of the workload, lack of knowledge and expertise about CME in educational bodies, evidence-base for quality in CME is missing, educational material about education is missing, motivation to learn about education even by educational bodies is low, CME group members are not able to use all educational sources, funding for all of this is not satisfactory.

The overall aim of CME/CPD –group is to provide optimal care for patients. More defined objective lines could be 1) providing practical tools, instruments, methods and ways to individual teachers to help GPs to learn and change their practices to provide optimal care and 2) to have influence on strategy makers in order to make accreditation to promote active methods of learning.

Activities 1) Tools for teachers:

1. Tools, methods and instruments for teachers should be identified and assessed by the group. The distribution of suitable methods among GP teachers should be guaranteed. Focus should be on practical and easy methods.
   
2. Promoting the implementation of tools (to give the message and have CPD on the agenda): local workshops, statement from the group concerning suitable methods, local groups to give the message to local authorities. Articles and translations of the basic documents in local languages. Follow-up locally

1. Landscape of CME organisations as AMEE, UEMS, EACCME, ASPHER, WFME, etc.
   
2. Mladenka and Eva will clarify these before September (Paula promised to take the UEMS-EAACME part)
   
3. Mladenka prepares a draft plan with the idea that EURACT would establish an advisory body for CME/CPD standards at the European level (before next meeting).
   
4. Specific project plan, application in December.
   
5. Establishing a larger body with local representatives and experts.
   

Paula Vainiomäki

Report of Specific Training Committee

Present: Dolores Fores, Bernard Gay, Monica Lindh, Olga Kuznetsova, Fergus O'Kelly, Janos Szabo, Llukan Rrumbullaku, Roar Maagaard (chair).
Absent: Margus Lember.

Re-organisation of committee

Council members had to choose committee for the next 3 years – an our group were lucky to have 2 new engaged members: Olga and Monica – a special welcome to them!
Margus Lember had wished to leave the chair for this committee (not being able to attend all meetings) – Margus and EB had both suggested Roar to take over – and Roar had prior to the meeting accepted this. (Later council decided, that election of committee-chairs should be formally done by the committee – this will happen in all committees in Aarhus, Sept. 2004).

From last meeting

Margus had informed that “The selection of Trainers” paper had been introduced in The European Journal of GP last December – and it had been put on the journals website – as it already is on our own website.

We decided to work with the following 5 items at the meeting–and in the near future:

Trainee Assessment

Margus had as agreed produced a very useful starting paper about assessment- including a note on the Council-survey conducted at the Vilnius meeting.

Bernard stressed that assessment had to be seen in very close relationship with the educational methods used.

We decided to work further with the assessment of trainees in vocational training in different ways:

1. to be main topic at meeting “with locals” in Aarhus September 2004
   
2. integrating the work done in the BME-group (Yonah)
   
3. asking Jan and Yonah (+ others?) to contribute to the Aarhus meeting
   
4. perhaps (if time permits) having a council-debate (30 min's?)
   
5. continuing discussion in the committee
   

Later personal note: this is to be coordinated with the educational agenda derived from the new European Definitions – included in this education agenda will also be suggested assessment methods.

Selection of trainees/recruitment of trainees

Llukan had as agreed in Leicester made a draft to a questionnaire to the other council members. We worked further on it – and nearly finished it.
Further plan:

1. Roar to finalise it – and then circulate it to the group to have quick further comments.
2. Roar then to send the final version to Agnes, who will distribute it to all council members. Replies to Agnes – Agnes send data to Llukan and Fergus. Llukan and Fergus will produce an overview and circulate this to the group in good time before Aarhus meeting.
3. (EB decided afterwards that such a committee-questionnaire do not have to be approved before sending out to council members).
   

Structure and length of VT-programmes across Europe

Huge differences exists among the different programmes: total length varies a lot, the hospital training period varies a lot, the GP-attachment period varies a lot, too.

Could we find the golden standard? Could we give overall recommendations?

No answer was heard in Madeira!

We decided although to try to work in direction of being able to give some recommendations. As a start the excel-file with the different VTS-schemes should be circulated to all in the group – responsible: Roar.

The discussion is then open in the group until Aarhus meeting – and in Aarhus!

Financing/supporting VT-programmes

Who is financing VT? How is the supporting structure around VT? Obstacles and possibilities. We wish to discover the differences somewhat more in this field.

A survey-draft and a discussion paper to be produces as a start.

Responsible: Dolores.

Trainee forum?

We as teachers have our forum in EURACT. Is there also a need for a European forum for trainees in GP?

Perhaps some inspiration can be obtained from the Junior Doctors' Project in combination with the Wonca Europe Conference in Amsterdam, June 2004?

Responsible for further progress with this producing a discussing paper: Fergus.

Roar Maagaard

Report of Member Service Committee

Chairman: Egle Zebiene
Participants: Adam Windak, Justin Allen, Igor Svab, Athanasios Simeonidis, Filipe Gomes

1. Program of international Leonardo-EURACT training trainers course in Zakopane was revised during the committee session. E.Z. reported on the procedure of selection of participants for the course. Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, Lithuania selected their participants according to the requirements. Czech Republic was able to present only one candidate (copy of the letter from Ivana Bogrova was sent to all the committee members), therefore according to the earlier decision, another country – Hungary was offered the possibility to join the course. Hungarian representatives were selected in time, course materials and registration forms distributed among participants.
   
2. Course materials were approved and discussed by the course organizers, they will be printed and prepared for the course in may.
   
3. As during the meeting in Leicester there was a wish to know more about the Committee work, the decision was taken to present the selection procedure and other details about the course during Report from the Committees session (presented later during the session by AW and EZ).
   
4. Sponsorship of the current courses. Following the earlier decision taken in Leicester, CNGE courses were decided not to be sponsored by EURACT in future due to the problems in information and communication, and lack of applications for sponsorship during last year (no applications received in 2004). For the Bled course will be continued to sponsor 5 participants (registration fee and accommodation).
   
5. The decision to provide financial support for the following to EURACT teaching the teachers courses was taken due to improved financial situation after the conference in Leicester. EURACT will support by 6000 EUR each course for the year 2005 and 2006. Portugal representative FG applied for the course in 2006, therefore countries like Spain, Italy and others (to be decided later) may join the course. This financial support should be used for covering travel costs of the teachers and organizational expenses. Accommodation to be paid by local organizers, travel costs – by participants themselves. AW offered the possibility that course materials, which will be published by Leonardo da Vinci program, will be available for the following courses in 2005 and 2006. Venue of the course 2005 to be decided before the Amsterdam 2004, discussed between Greece and Turkey representatives.
   
6. Presentation of the Leonardo-EURACT course during the conference in Amsterdam was discussed. To be prepared finally by the team of trainers in Zakopane.
   
7. Annual GP teachers' conference in Bled. As this year this conference will be organized in connection to the course in Bled, emphasis should be put on the information that teachers which are not coming to the Bled course itself, are also invited and encouraged to participate. Council members will be asked to promote the conference in their countries, having in mind that in future it would be very important if the course would develop to an EURACT annual event.
   
8. EURACT website. As some concerns about the design and update of our website was expressed during the EB meeting in London, the decision was taken that in Aarhus additional half a session will be organized for the organization of the website, participants: Yonah, Sakis, Paula, Roar, Francesco.
   

Action points for the future:

• AS and OB to decide about the venue of the EURACT training the trainers course 2006.
• AW, EZ, IS, JA, AS to discuss the presentation of the EURACT course in Amsterdam and organize the workshop during WONCA Europe 2004.
• All Council members: to promote a GP Teachers conference in Bled 2004.
• RM and JA to allocate additional session for the website in Aarhus.
  

Egle Zebiene