Although slightly shorter than the previous three days, Day 4 of the 24th WONCA Europe Conference was still packed with activities than ran right up to the closing ceremony.
Here are some highlights.
Workshop: Keeping patients safe by avoiding harm from medical over intervention and harm from under intervention
This workshop generated a discussion and recommendations for managing harms from medical overintervention, and from underuse of helpful interventions in family medicine. It began with a presentation on the harms from overmedicalisation, overinvestigation, overprescribing, overtesting and overdiagnosis, as well as the harms from undetection, undertreatment, underinvestigation, delayed diagnosis, missed diagnosis and screening. Participants were then given clinical cases for discussion in small groups, learning and sharing perspectives on clinical management from different European health systems and cultures. EQuiP will report on the conclusions from this workshop.
Garth Manning, CEO of WONCA on this year's Conference
Plenary lecture: Compassion, respect and empathy: The essence of Family Medicine
Ana Nunes Barata – WONCA, Silom, Bangrak, Portugal
Throughout her plenary lecture, Ana Nunes Barata empahsised the importance of ensuring for the well-being and care for patients by general practitioners, especially as they are the first point of contact with the healthcare system. Communicating and acting with compassion, respect and empathy are the cornerstone for the work of a Family Doctor. These attitudes make clinical practice patient-centered and are the most important therapies in Family Medicine, supporting the importance of solidarity in healthcare.
Workshop: Small steps towards a safer environment in primary care
How can we create healthier and safer primary care practices? The objective of this session was to show how it can be easy to make simple improvements in our daily practice. Participants were encouraged to consider small changes to improve patient safety or professional wellbeing and shared these ideas of change and examples of work processes and procedures with potential for adverse events. They then suggested simple solutions to improve safety and had an open discussion on the feasibility and sustainability of the various proposals. The workshop was designed to open the way to sharing and learning pragmatic and realistic plans for improving practice safety issues in participants countries.
Closing Ceremony
The Conference came to an end at the closing ceremony where we presented a number of WONCA Europe Awards.
The 2019 5 Star Doctor Award went to Dr Anargiros Mariolis from Greece this year.
This year the Montegut Global Scholars Award was presented to Snezana Knezevic from Serbia.
The 2019 WONCA Europe Scholarship Award was awarded to Claire Marie Thomas from the UK.
The Fons Sips Outstanding Achievement Award was presented to Elena Klusova by the Vasco da Gama Movement.
WONCA Europe President, Mehmet Ungan, and Michaela Macháčová, President of the WONCA Europe Conference 2019 gave a closing speech thanking all participants, speakers and the conference organisers for the wonderful conference.
Mehmet Ungan, WONCA Europe President
Shlomo Vinker, WONCA Europe President-Elect
We look forward to seeing you in 2020 for the 25th WONCA Europe Conference in Berlin!