Contact EURACT

E-mail

Phone
(32) 16 33 74 64

FAX
(32) 16 33 74 80

LITHUANIA

Health care system

No important good news in health care system after joining EU. The biggest Union of Physicians announced that the strike on May 17^th will be started by health care workers for increasing the financing of health care system and especially salaries of medical personnel. Patients seem generally to support the idea, but the Government already announced that there are no finances enough for additional financing.

BME

No positive changes as far. Actually, this period of training still remains under most influence of specialized university departments and appears most conservative for introduction of FM. Family medicine is only introduced into the undergraduate curriculum during the fifth year of studies, and the course is still to short to make proper presentation of the specialty. Additional pressure should be used for increase of training hours in family medicine, but right now the situation is stable without positive changes.

Vocational training

Vocational training programmes in the Universities are improving gradually in terms that it is recognized that training hours in family medicine should be increased. It is important to mention that Leonardo-EURACT training the trainers course which took place in November, had a positive impact to the knowledge and attitudes of trainers in FM. It has also been recognised that all the trainers, even of narrow specialties, who are involved in training of Family doctors should undergo the special training courses, and Leonardo-EURACT course could be the good basis for it in future.

CME/CPD

Re-licensing procedure started last year demonstrated only formal approach of responsible bodies to the CME activities. Hours to be collected for re-licensing are divided into two parts: qualification courses, organized by Universities, and conferences, which may be run jointly by professional societies, universities and pharmaceutical companies. Conference hours must form not more than 40% of all hours. Very interesting event in CME activities was introduction to Lithuanian trainers in FM the Leonardo da Vinci project on modern teaching and learning methods , presented by Polish College of GPs.