Newsletter: March 2018

Meeting together across our global community is a really important means of sharing good practice, encouraging mutual support and professional development, and creating and maintaining formal policy and processes. I do hope that as many people as possible will attend at least one WONCA conference this year, and that we particularly succeed in gathering our global community together in South Korea

​​Nos rencontres internationales sont un véritable moyen de partager les bonnes pratiques, d’encourager le soutien mutuel et la formation continue et de créer et maintenir des politiques et processus formels. J’espère que le plus grand nombre possible de membres assisteront au moins à l’une de nos conférences cette année

Que nuestra comunidad global pueda reunirse en todo el mundo es una forma realmente importante de compartir buenas prácticas, alentar el apoyo mutuo y el desarrollo profesional, y crear y mantener políticas y procesos formales. Espero que el mayor número de gente posible asista a, por lo menos, una conferencia de WONCA este año, y que tengamos éxito a la hora de reunir a nuestra comunidad global en Corea del Sur, en octubre.

This month I want to return to the theme of WONCA conferences and events. These are important landmarks in our calendar, as they afford a great opportunity to meet up with old friends, to make some new friends, and to share areas of interest with colleagues from all around the world.

Kyle Hoedebecke, inaugural chair of Polaris, the WONCA Young Doctors’ Movement in North America was recently selected as the US Army Physician of the Year. he has been working in South Korea for two years and here he talks of "My experience working in South Korea"

The WONCA Special Interest Group on Migrant Care, International Health & Travel Medicine has a new co-chair, Guus Busser, who joins existing chair, Maria van den Muijsenbergh. Who is Guus Busser?

WONCA CEO, Garth Manning writes about World Family Doctor Day coming on May 19.​ Theme : "Family doctors - leading the way to better health" and the President woudl like your examples of activties that demonstrate this theme.

This month I want to return to the theme of WONCA conferences and events. These are important landmarks in our calendar, as they afford a great opportunity to meet up with old friends, to make some new friends, and to share areas of interest with colleagues from all around the world.

WONCA Europe comes to the beautiful city of Krakow in May 2018. Find our more about the seven keynote speeches and note the early bird registration ends February 28.

On the 26-27th January, 2018, the 5th Vasco da Gama Movement (VdGM) Forum took place in the beautiful city of Porto, Portugal. “Stronger Together: charting the course to navigate the future” was this forum’s topic. The program and all activities related to the forum, were designed to promote teamwork and also to be a showcase for new, alternative ways to structure and to organize a conference.

Una de las cuestiones que nuestros miembros nos dicen acerca de lo que más valoran de WONCA es su viabilidad a la hora de defender nuestros intereses a nivel de la Organización Mundial de la Salud. Invertimos tiempo, energías y dinero intentando que tu voz pueda ser escuchada en diferentes actividades la Organización Mundial de la Salud.

Amanda Howe (President) and Viviana Martinez-Bianchi (WONCA WHO Liaison) write: One of the things that our members tell us they value about WONCA is its ability to advocate at the World Health Organization level. We spend time, energy, and money trying to get your voice heard in the different WHO activities.

The WONCA rural family will be meeting once again in two months’ time in Delhi for the 15th WONCA World Rural Health Conference. It is this global collective approach that has made a difference over the last 22 years since we met in Shanghai in 1996 for our first inaugural conference.

Dr Maria-Pilar Astier-Peña (Pictured), chair of the WONCA Working Party on Quality and Safety has participated in an expert consultation concerning “Early global action to support implementation of the third WHO Patient Safety Challenge “Medication Without Harm” (#MWH Pride).

Chris Dowrick, chair of the WONCA Working Party on Mental Health writes about the latest resource produced by his Working Party : Core Competencies of Family Doctors in Mental Health Care. In the document they consider that there are six domains for the core competencies of family doctors in primary mental health care.

Every month the journal Education for Primary Care provides WONCA members with free access to one interesting article. We are offering free access this month to a paper from Maggie Bartlett and the team at Keele Medical School UK on community attachments for 15 weeks in final year and the accompanying stimulating commentary from Paul Worley.

The WONCA Special Interest Group on Migrant Care, International Health & Travel Medicine has a new co-chair, Guus Busser, who joins existing chair, Maria van den Muijsenbergh. Who is Guus Busser?

The WONCA Special Interest Group on Family Violence calls on all Member Organizations in WONCA to address family violence policy, training and procedures as a matter of urgent priority in order to have their members supported and resourced to manage this common problem effectively and in an evidence-based manner.

MRCGP (Int) will provide a grant amount of USD 2500 per year to support young GPs of The Spice Route movement in certain educational activities.

Every month the journal Education for Primary Care provides WONCA members with free access to one interesting article. We are offering free access this month to a paper from Maggie Bartlett and the team at Keele Medical School UK on community attachments for 15 weeks in final year and the accompanying stimulating commentary from Paul Worley.