61 st EQuiP Assembly Meeting in Zagreb, 22-24 September 2022
EQuiP News for WE.
www.equip.woncaeurope.org
and
www.qualityfamilymedicine.eu
EQuiP is the European Network for Quality and Safety in Family Medicine in WONCA Europe. EQuiP is the European society for Quality in Family / General Practice, and the name also embodies the ethos of the network, équipe = a team in French.
During the peak times of the COVID19 pandemic we met online, even hosting our annual spring conferences online. In 11th & 12th March 2022, we held a two day online event for the 60 th meeting of EQuiP. The theme was “The Future of Primary Care: Securing & Sustaining Quality for Everyone” when we explored quality of care for patients and quality of work for primary care clinicians. Further information is here www.qualityfamilymedicine.eu
In September, EQuiP network met in person for the first time since the pandemic, in Zagreb, Croatia. The meeting was held in the beautiful Croatian Institute for Brain Research, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, and was opened by representatives from University of Zagreb School of Medicine. First, we solemnly paid tribute to the hard work and warm friendship of our two EQuiP colleagues who died since our last meeting, Dr Dijana Ramic Severinac, Croatia and Dr Isabelle Dupie, France. May they rest in peace. We thanked their families for sharing these two wonderful family doctors with the ‘EQuiP family’. We welcomed new members, and began with the traditional business meeting, website updates and finances. Dr José Miguel Bueno Ortiz delivered a report on WONCA Europe (WE) Executive Board activities, WE newsletter, twitter account and facebook page. He also reported from WONCA WORLD Working Party on Quality and Patient Safety. During Day 2 we had several topics, one was https://pricov19study.ugent.be/ a globally unique and ambitious research project involving 45 academic departments and national colleges from 38 countries (37 European countries and Israel). The EQuiP members at Ghent University Belgium have gathered data on the way family medicine and primary care organised itself during COVID-19 and have already begun to publish the multiple research papers in peer-reviewed journals. Many more are on the way. We had a plenary Session on existing and new Working Groups (WGs) and Projects, Outputs, Collaborations, Teamwork, Leadership and Communications. We had an offsite visit to a Croatian family practice. We had such a productive meeting, seeking 2 workshops to submit to WONCA Europe 2023 in Brussels, and coming up with 9 finalists and had to vote on the top 2 to go forward! The others will also be prepared as specific projects or abstracts for submission. Prof Goranka Petricek, Dr Eva Arvidsson and Dr Piet van den Bussche gave us impressive presentations and Dr Andrée Rochfort, chaired the three day meeting. Some delegates joined us virtually at the opening session and the closing session on Day 3. The energy and innovation among the delegates was palpable and we look forward to planning the EQuiP Spring Conference 2023, details to follow.
