Stuart Holmes is a family doctor in Manchester and he also works part-time for REACHE, an organisation that supports refugee doctors to requalify in the UK. He grew up in Northern Ireland but studied medicine and trained as a family doctor in Manchester, with one year working in Australia in between. He has been involved in EYFDM since the first year of his residency and he is really passionate about the opportunities that EYFDM offers for young doctors in Europe.
Stuart, you are EYFDM President since 2024. Congratulations
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How would you introduce EYFDM to our readers? EYFDM stands for the European Young Family Doctors’ Movement, and we are WONCA Europe’s network for early career family doctors. We represent young doctors within WONCA Europe but – just as importantly – we create opportunities that develop our members as family doctors and professionals. This is through pan-European primary care exchanges, educational conferences delivered by our members and by fostering an international community that inspires our members.
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Why did you decide to change your name? (Vasco da Gama Movement). We are WONCA’s original young doctors’ movement, first established in 2004 in Lisbon and originally named the Vasco da Gama Movement (VdGM). We were established in Portugal and we took the name of Vasco da Gama as WONCA Europe’s young doctors were embarking on a journey of discovery just as he did many centuries before. However, we changed our name in 2022 to the European Young Family Doctors’ Movement for two reasons. We wanted a name that was self-explanatory to potential new members and partners. But we also wanted to move away from a name that celebrates a colonial figure, out of respect for our counterparts in other WONCA regions for whom European colonisation was a painful experience.
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What are your goals for the next years? We meet as a movement twice each year, at a standalone EYFDM Forum and at the EYFDM pre-conference before the annual WONCA Europe conference. These events are our highlights of the year as the scientific programmes are delivered by our members, giving them a chance to learn from each and develop their academic skills through presenting workshops etc. Our next event is the EYFDM pre-conference at WONCA Europe in Dublin (September 2024) and we will then meet in April 2025 in the ‘Grand Région’ for our 9th Forum, hosted jointly by Luxembourg, Germany and France. Presenting these conferences and continuing to provide exchanges and other opportunities for our members are our key goals for the coming years.
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8th EYFDM Forum 2024 with the theme Together we grow - building a healthy future, took place 12th – 13th April 2024, 20 Tech Gate, Vienna, Austria. What can you tell us about it? The EYFDM 8th Forum 2024 in Austria was a great success with over 270 young family medicine doctors registered from across the WONCA Europe region. An inspiring scientific programme was complemented by stunning social activities and practice exchanges. We look forward to the Austrian team sharing more highlights in the WONCA Europe Newsletter (including photos) shortly!
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What will be your contributions to WE CONFERENCE 2024 (and preconference)? Residents and young doctors are always a large presence at the WONCA Europe conference and I am sure that this year will be no exception! Particularly look out for our academic workshop where we showcase work of the finalists of our Junior Researcher Award. If you are a resident or young doctor, then please join us for our pre-conference, which will be held a day and a half before the main conference begins. This is a more informal meeting and is a great opportunity to make connections with other young doctors before the main conference begins.
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Aaron Poppleton, WEEB EYFDM representative, was one of the speakers (in the last WE Open Meeting during last WE conference 2023 that was titled: High touch versus high tech: the crucial role of face-to-face general practice in the digital age. What can you tell us about his contribution? The WONCA Europe Open Meeting provided an opportunity for the difference WE Networks to share their perspectives on this important topic. Aaron shared European Young Family Doctors perspectives, recognising that digital care can provide both benefits and challenges for family medicine doctors and their patients. This can include new career opportunities and more flexible work patterns, as well as challenges in maintaining team support and learning from colleagues as a young family doctor.
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What is the Bridge Project? The Bridge Project is an initiative by EYFDM members to bring together young doctors from Europe and beyond to collaborate and share experiences on areas of common interest. It allows people to have an ‘exchange experience’ without travelling abroad through getting to know likeminded colleagues virtually. We are on our second edition now and had 90 applications – look out for the third edition soon!
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What do you think will be the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the next years? This is an area of particular interest for many EYFDM members, and a group from EYFDM hopes to present on this subject at WONCA Europe in Dublin later this year. ChatGPT can comfortably pass the written part of the licensing exam for family doctors in the UK, so I expect that AI will lead to a further democratisation of medical knowledge in society. However I am not at all worried for the role of family doctors – I think there will always be a need for community doctors who have strong clinical acumen, humanity and a holistic outlook.
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What are the relations of EYFDM with the rest of the WONCA EUROPE networks and Special Interest Groups (SIG)? People don’t remain young doctors forever and we hope our members’ involvement in EYFDM sparks a desire to remain active within family medicine at the European level as people move forward in their careers. We strongly promote WONCA Europe’s other networks and special interest groups (SIGs) to our members to help them find their place within the wider family.
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What are the relations of EYFDM with the other WONCA Regional Young Family doctors movements and with the WONCA WORLD young family doctor movement? Each WONCA region has a young doctors’ movement (YDM) and we are coordinated by Dr Cheryl Chan from Hong Kong, who is the young doctor representative on the WONCA World Executive. Every two months, we host collaborative webinars for young doctors and we also facilitate exchanges for young doctors between regions.
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What are the main challenges for EYFDM right now? The pandemic was a difficult period for us but we have bounced back with vibrancy and thankfully there is really good engagement in EYFDM at the moment –members from our grassroots across Europe are engaged in leading Special Interest Groups and hosting events for us in their countries. The greatest barrier for EYFDM members is the cost of attending our conferences regularly. We try to mitigate this by offering bursaries and you will see us selling tickets for our lottery in Dublin to help fund these – please buy some tickets!
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Which book are you reading now, and do you recommend it? I don’t read anything longer than journal articles, to be honest! The longform content that I do consume is generally podcasts, either about current affairs or true crime. However, some EYFDM members from Germany (led by Dr Fabian Dupont) have recently started an EYFDM Podcast, where they interview family doctors with interesting stories. It’s available on Spotify so do check it out!
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A final greeting to our readers. I hope that this interview gave you new insights into the work of EYFDM. Please do encourage young doctors you know to get involved with us – we are always very welcoming to new members. We are @eyfdm on Instagram and you can sign-up to our regular email newsletter here. Lastly I would like to thank WONCA Europe for their considerable ongoing support for EYFDM – we couldn’t do what we do for young doctors without you! Cheers!