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TURKEY

Health reforms including in developing the primary care and family practice are being implemented very slowly because of resource insufficiency.

Annual conference was held last week in Sivas. The main topic of the conference was “mental health in primary care”.

Basic Medical Education

The number of the Departments of Family Medicine has reached to 34 out of 43 Medical Schools in our country. GP/FM is the subject of teaching at 21 Medical Schools with different extend. But practical training in general practice is organised only in a few universities. There are now 66 teachers in the departments of FM in Turkish Universities. 56 of them are family physicians and 10 from other specialties, all full teachers, no associated teacher. There are nine professors at the departments, two of them family physician.

Relations between the departments were discussed in a separate session in the last annual conference. The aim of the session was to inform the departments each other about their activities in the universities and to establish a similar content of teaching for all departments. A national workshop on the role of the departments of FM in medical education was decided to be held in near future.

Vocational Training

For long time we proposed a limitation of the number of clinical specialist training places and an increase of the number of family medicine training places. Last spring the Ministery of Health asked the departments of FM in the universities for how many trainees they could accept each year. The departments declared that they were ready to accept a large number of trainees. We need about 2000 family medicine training places per year. Now it is planned to be reached to this number within two years, beginning with 600 new trainees this year. Besides university departments the Ministery of Health has 11 teaching hospitals having family medicine specialist training schemes. If it is carried on this will be a big opportunity for developing the departments with a demand and pressure from the Ministery of Health to the Higher Educational Council; new academic places and new resources for the established 34 departments and new departments in the other universities.

Retraining the practitioner physicians

The development about family medicine trainee places was also a prerequisite for retraining of practitioner physicians in a transitional period. Since last council meeting the most important development on family medicine teaching has been the debate on the retraining program. A structured training for the physicians practicing in primary care and having not specific training was not in the agenda of the Ministery of Health in the process of reorganization and quality improvement in primary care. But Turkish Association of Family Physicians (TAHUD) was insistent on a structured retraining program. This was discussed and adopted during the two workshop held in the beginning of 2003 and organized by TAHUD. We prepared projects and presented them to the MoH.

Last June Primary Health Care Directorate of MoH establihed an Advisory Committee on Family Medicine. It was composed of family medicine academicians, TAHUD representatives, Turkish Medical Association representatives (practitioner physicians) and officials of MoH. The Committee was held three times during the summer months and prepared some proposals on the issue. The main proposal is a retraining program of one year lasting for seven years. The training will be implemented with a joint effort of the interested parties provided that the university departments being in the center.

We, as departments of family medicine and EURACT teachers, are now working in details of the program and waiting for the decision of the MoH.

CME

There is noting new. The department of FM in the Republic University in Sivas organised an annual conference last week in collaboration with TAHUD.

What I have done as EURACT representative in Turkey?

I have close links to the Turkish representatives of EGPRN and EQuiP. They are all EURACT members.

As I mentioned in Vilnius report, as Turkish EURACT members we carried out the 8th EURACT course in Ankara in Last May. There was 33 participants.

EURACT is well-known by all family physicians, university departments, practitioner physicians and even by the Ministery of Health. I have three new candidates for EURACT membership.