The 74th EGPRN meeting was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 10–13 May 2012. The theme of the meeting was ‘Quality improvement in the care of chronic disease in family practice: The contribution of education and research’. High quality care is the patient's right and an obligation for health care providers. It can only be achieved by the cooperation of researchers, educators and those who are working in clinical practice. The meeting was held in the ‘Domus Medica’, the beautiful home of all organizations of Slovenian doctors.
The pre-conference workshop was about ‘Vocational education and training in quality improvement’, led by the president of Euract, Professor Janko Kersnik. The aim of any medical teaching is to implement evidence, clinical guidelines, new procedures and best practice to make patient care more effective, efficient, safe and patient-friendly. The workshop consisted of two parts. In the first part, existing training programmes on quality and several topics on quality improvement in continuous medical education were presented. The afternoon focused on how to asses quality improvement learning.
Traditionally, one or two keynote speakers opened each day. Professor Igor Švab presented the development of General Practice as an academic discipline in Slovenia. He stressed the need for international collaboration in building research capacity. He described the careful development of a GP teaching curriculum using a variety of teaching methods, which resulted in a leading position in teaching at the medical faculty. The keynote lecture of Professor Janko Kersnik was a reflective speech on the importance of comprehensive patient management, which should be accounted for in education on all levels and in research projects. Finally, Professor Michel Wensing gave an excellent overview of research topics and research methods in quality improvement research, which aims to identify interventions and factors, associated with effective changes in the process and outcomes of healthcare.
Several thematic papers were presented on quality outcomes, instrument development for quality assessment, systematic approach to chronic disease management, interventions for quality improvement, issues on patients’ safety and educational programmes for patients. The discussion of all presentations was lively and constructive, giving presenters comments on how to continue their research or feedback on their presentation. As always, the EGPRN poster sessions—six groups of five posters grouped by different themes (multimorbidity, student education, cardiovascular diseases, prevention, neurological and mental disorders and medical care)—provoked a lot of discussion. The poster prize was won by P. Nabbe, J. Y. Le Reste, A. Le Prielec and others with a poster titled: ‘Depression and multimorbidity in family medicine: Systematic literature review: What validated tools are used to screen or diagnose depression in general practice?’ A new parallel session was the ‘methodology session’, in which senior researchers gave feedback on project ideas that were ‘in development’.
EGPRN meetings are also an opportunity for several collaborative groups to meet, after or before the official conference programme. In Ljubljana, the Womanpower project, the FPDM group (Family practice depression and multimorbidity) and the group for research on electronic medical records had their group meetings. It is a tradition of EGPRN that participants can visit local colleagues on Friday evening. The Community Health Centre Ljubljana and some private contractors opened their doors, and many participants enjoyed the look behind the scenes of Ljubljana's primary health care. Thanks to the beautiful weather, everyone could enjoy each other's company during the long evenings on the terraces of the bars and restaurants in the centre of Ljubljana. We are sure that a lot of professional enthusiasm for research in family medicine and cooperation between countries has been shared.