THREE JUNIOR RESEARCHER AWARDS 2013 GRANTED
The Vasco da Gama Movement (VdGM) ‘Junior researcher award’ aims at promoting a generation of junior general practitioners/family physicians (GPs/FPs) who include research skills with patient care as a lifetime career. This award honours outstanding research proposals and researchers’ careers of trainees or junior GPs/FPs with up to five years working experience after qualification.
The 2013 edition of the Junior Researcher Award has been granted to the following three junior champions in family medicine research: Nikki van Dessel (The Netherlands) for her proposal ‘Prognosis and perpetuating factors of medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS): a prospective cohort study;’ Joao Sarmento (Portugal) for his proposal ‘Clinical information integration project;’ and Pavel Vychytil (Czech Republic) for his proposal ‘Compliance and non-compliance with GP/specialty training requirements.’
We hope that these ideas will be of inspiration for the junior GPs/FPs and trainees from all over the world who would like to engage with research in family medicine.
Four international reviewers (Professor Michael Kidd, Professor Eva Hummers-Pradier, Dr Greg Irving and Dr Tobias Freund) rated these research ideas to be meaningful for clinical practice and of high methodological quality. We should like to express our gratitude to each one of the jurors for their effort in evaluating the candidates, as well as to the networks of EGPRN, Wonca and Wonca Europe for their continuous support. We also should like to thank all candidates and sincerely congratulate them on their outstanding achievement. The winners have been invited to present their proposals during the Wonca World Conference in Prague.
GREAT INTEREST IN VDGM FUND
Twenty-two applications for the ‘VdGM Fund’ were received, a number that reflects the success of the programme launched last year. After careful selection, six candidates have been awarded the bursary and will be aided to participate in the Wonca World conference in Prague. However, this great interest and number of applications is also evidence of the daunting financial problems that afflict our continent. Our Movement aims at intensifying the promotion of the importance of the VdGM Fund in Europe, raising awareness to Scientific Associations and Colleges, and endeavouring to find additional financial resources to ensure the continuity of this significant initiative.
VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE
The VdGM has launched its brand new web site under the Wonca Europe umbrella (http://www.vdgm.eu). The new platform offers us the flexibility to publish content of good quality and become an engagement hub, as we work on integrating all of our social media connections with our content.
An automated ‘Hippocrates exchange system’ has been developed to support all exchange procedures. The candidates who wish to apply for an exchange can get in touch with either the national exchange coordinators or the host practices they would like to visit directly. They can fill in and exchange all the necessary documents online and take advantage of a set of tools that provide them with a better means of communication and monitoring of the process.