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Communication and Information

News VDGM: VASCO DA GAMA MOVEMENT

Training for family physicians: time to go global

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GLOBAL HEALTH In the increasingly interdependent world of the twenty-first century, global health is on our doorsteps and in our consulting rooms. People travel, and diseases move beyond national borders more rapidly than ever. Family doctors increasingly serve multicultural societies with diverse needs. As physicians we have a powerful role as health advocates, which requires engagement with issues of globalization, health inequalities, climate change and political instability; but how can we get started in global health education? What is global health? Is it relevant to family doctors? These were questions debated at a recent Wonca World Conference workshop in Prague, at which educationalists and global health aficionados teased out some of the important issues involved in ‘globalizing ’ family doctor training.

Alice Shiner RCGP Junior International Committee, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, UK [email protected]

THE WORKSHOP An international faculty, including representatives from the European Academy of Teachers in General Practice / Family Medicine (EURACT) and the Vasco da Gama Movement, as well as colleagues from the USA and Canada, ran the workshop. They aimed to raise awareness of the relevance of global health to primary care, encourage more family medicine training schemes to offer global health educational content and inspire those who attended the workshop to ‘think globally, act locally.’ Workshop delegates were presented with a short introduction to global health training in primary care and two presentations about how this is being achieved in Canada and the USA. However, the main focus of the session was on enabling attendees to share ideas and experiences. Within small groups delegates debated questions of ‘What can you learn about family medicine by meeting colleagues or patients from abroad?,’ ‘What is global health and why is it relevant to general practitioners?’ and ‘What kind of global health training would be valuable for GP trainees?’ The key points raised within each group were shared with the larger group. At the end, each delegate was asked to generate action points by reflecting on ‘What can we do to improve global health opportunities (Supplementary Appendix Table 1. available online only, at http//www.informa healthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/13814788.2013.845746)’ A wide range of benefits of global health training were identified by delegates, and a strong sense that this was important for all family doctors, not just those travelling overseas, but also particularly for those working with marginalized and underserved populations. Hand-outs were provided electronically for those wishing to pursue an interest in global health further, including links to relevant articles, web sites and books for further reading (Supplementary Appendix Table 2. available online only, at http//www.informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/13814788.2013.845746).

OUTCOMES This workshop showed that education in global health is a truly international endeavour with applicability across geographical and cultural barriers. At the end

ISSN 1381-4788 print/ISSN 1751-1402 online © 2013 Informa Healthcare DOI: 10.3109/13814788.2013.845746

Jessica Watson RCGP Junior International Committee, Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol, UK [email protected]

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of the workshop there was a strong sense of the need for unification in advocating global primary care, with a feeling that much can be achieved starting from a grassroots level. We hope that by implementing the action points generated, and sharing and following examples of best practice, such as the USA and Canadian models, we can ensure our future family physicians are trained to face the healthcare challenges of a globalized society.

Eur J Gen Pract Downloaded from informahealthcare.com by National Silicosis Library on 10/30/14 For personal use only.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors should like to thank all the workshop facilitators and participants whose input helped shape the content of this article, in particular: Luisa Pettigrew, Greg Irving, Robert Burman, Yvonne Van Leeuwen, Roar Maagaard, Neil Arya, Jessica Evert, Francine Lemire, Scott Loeliger, Katherine Rouleau, Christine Gibson and Zuzana Vaneckova. Supplementary material available online Supplementary Appendix Tables 1 and 2 are available at http://www.informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/ 13814788.2013.845746.

News EURIPA: THE EUROPEAN RURAL AND ISOLATED PRACTITIONERS ASSOCIATION

The European differential rural-urban practitioner profile A recent study has established the key differences between rural and urban European practitioners: the preliminary results are available at the EURIPA web site (http://www.euripa.org, at ‘4th Hot topic’). More than 400 family doctors from 33 European countries have responded to an inquest, which aimed to outline the differences between rural and urban practice. Significant results have been found in several areas: recruitment and retention, distance to hospital and ambulance care, work burden and time for patient consultation, solo versus team practice, offices and equipment, computerized consultation possibilities, teaching and learning activities, imbursements and expenditure, living facilities, locum, etc.

NEEDS Some of the identified needs for rural practitioners have been related to the following areas: educational (less academic activity or publishing; the need for specific rural CME: emergency care has specially been highlighted by the 83% of the responders), resources (fewer human resources and instruments/equipment, greater expenditure, and difficulty in finding locums: a need identified by 75% of the responders), greater implication of their public NHS in helping with imbursements and resources, isolation (distance to secondary and hospital care, to pharmacies and to their own patients: whereas half of the urban community has access to ambulance care in less than 15 min, only a sixth of the rural community has such access), policy making (75% refer to no specific rural health policies and only half have rural representatives in their networks: colleges, scientific associations, etc.), rural practitioners also work in smaller teams and more

ISSN 1381-4788 print/ISSN 1751-1402 online © 2013 Informa Healthcare DOI: 10.3109/13814788.2013.845747

Jose Lopez-Abuin President [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/ EURIPA.EURIPA https://twitter.com/EURIPA_ EURIPA http://www.linkedin.com/ groups/EURIPA-4439927?trk⫽ myg_ugrp_ovr

VDGM: Vasco da Gama Movement.

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