Balearic Meeting of European Residents and Young GPs in Palma de Mallorca
“Thinking Outside The Box”.
On September 14-15, 2018, more than one hundred European Residents and Young GPs met at the College of Doctors of the Balearic Islands (COMIB) in Palma de Mallorca, to take part in the VI Balearic Meeting of European Residents and Young GPs. It was organised by the Balearic Society of Family and Community Medicine, with the collaboration of the COMIB, the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC) and the Vasco da Gama Movement (VdGM).
Under the theme “Thinking Outside The Box”, the organising committee tried to motivate the participants to open their minds and to cross borders. Residents and young GPs played an active role in the different sessions about empathy, respect and assertiveness beyond the illness, over-diagnosis, emerging infectious diseases and Chemsex. Other workshops that were run: cardiopulmonary resuscitation, spirometry and respiratory therapies, ultrasound scanning in primary care, deprescription, how to manage the "Difficult Patient”, and mindfulness. Finally, they were divided into small groups to play the traditional and exciting Medical Trivia Quiz.
The residents and young GPs were able to exchange experiences and compare different health systems and GP training programs, in the countries they came from. The week before the meeting, the Vasco da Gama Movement conference exchange took place. Ten European Family Medicine residents from Turkey, The Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Ukraine, Italy, United Kingdom and the Czech Republic took the pulse of the Spanish National Health Service joining the daily GP activities in the Primary Care Health Centers of Palma de Mallorca.
The opening keynote speaker, Dr Martin Sattler (Luxembourg), one of the most active members in the history of VdGM, guided all present to Think Outside the Box.
More than 60 scientific abstracts were accepted. Of these, six were selected to be an oral presentation and the rest by electronic poster. Among them, the winner was Dr Klaudia Bialobrzeska (GP trainee, Mallorca, Spain) with the oral presentation titled “Patients without appointment in a Heathcare Center - Association between waiting times and requested urgent appointments”. She won one registration to the 24th WONCA Europe Conference (Bratislava, May 2019), courtesy of semFYC. The second place was Dr Sara Correia (GP trainee, Vigo, Spain), who will attend to the 6th VdGM Forum in Torino (September 2019) thanks to her work “Doctor, I have bugs all over me!”.
In the best poster category, the winner was “How to improve trichomonas diagnosis in Primary Care” by Dr Fang Chen (GP trainee, Madrid, Spain), who won the “Illustrated Atlas of Emergency”- a SemFYC publication.
The event was organized with no pharmaceutical industry contribution, and the official language was English (Easy English format).
The Balearic Meeting has been established as one of the key annual medical meetings for young family doctors from all over Europe and beyond.
Dr Enrique Álvarez Porta Email:
ealvarez@semfyc.es