“Thinking Outside The Box” – VI Balearic Meeting of European Residents & Young GPs

On the 14th and 15th of September 2018, more than 100 European residents and young GPs met in the venue of the College of Doctors of Balearic Islands (COMIB) in Palma de Mallorca to take part in the VI Balearic Meeting of European Residents & Young GPs. This 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.

Thinking Outside The Box

Under the logo “Thinking Outside The Box”, the organising committee asked residents and young GPs to open their minds crossing their daily borders. The 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.

They were also the protagonists in the myriad of workshops that were run: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Spirometry & Respiratory Therapies, Ultrasound Scanning in Primary Care, De-prescription, How to manage the "Difficult Patient” and Mindfulness. Residents and young GPs were able to exchange experiences and compare different health systems and GP training programmes in the different countries they came from.

The week before the meeting the Vasco da Gama Movement (VdGM)/Balearic Meeting Conference Exchange took place. Ten European FM residents from Turkey, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Ukraine, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic took the pulse of the Spanish National Health Service and joined the daily GP activities in primary health centres of Palma de Mallorca.

The Opening Conference key-note speaker Dr. Martin Sattler (Luxembourg), one of the most active members in the history of VdGM, masterfully guided the residents and young GPs to Think Outside the Box. More than 60 scientific abstracts were accepted. Six of them were selected to be defended in oral presentation and the rest by electronic poster with oral defense. Among them, the winner was Dr. Klaudia Bialobrzeska (GP trainee, Mallorca, Spain) on “Patients without appointment in a Heath Centre”, and who was awarded a place at the 24th WONCA Europe Conference (Bratislava, May 2019), courtesy of semFYC. The second place was for Dr. Sara Correia (GP trainee, Vigo, Spain), who will assist 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 trichomoniasis diagnose at primary care” by Dr. Fang Chen (GP trainee, Madrid, Spain), who was awarded with the valued “Illustrated Atlas of Emergency” of SemFYC editions. The event was organised with no pharmaceutical industry contribution, and the official language was English. The Balearic Meeting has become one of the key annual medical meetings for young family doctors from all over Europe and far beyond.

Dr. Enrique Álvarez Porta Email: ealvarez@semfyc.es