EDITORIAL

The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Murcia welcomes all health science educators to the 22nd Congress of the SEDEM

La Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Murcia espera a todos los educadores en ciencias de la salud en el XXII Congreso de la SEDEM

Arcadi Gual

Director de la revista FEM-Fundación Educación Médica
E-mail: agual@fundacioneducacionmedica.cat

The 22nd Congress of the Spanish Medical Education Society (SEDEM) will be held in Murcia on 28-30 October 2015. The biennial congress of the SEDEM, which has in fact been Hispano-Portuguese since 2011, is the main meeting place for our educational community, but is also attended by many of our Latin-American colleagues. This event has steadily grown in terms of both the number of participants and the quality of the contributions, which makes it clear that medical educators are concerned with innovating and being in a position to meet the challenges they currently have to face in training healthcare professionals. The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Murcia is eagerly looking forward to the arrival of the educational community working in this field and, with this in mind, it has drawn up a scientific programme that it hopes will make this the best congress to date. The programme includes burning issues in medical education, concerning the different levels of training (graduate, postgraduate, specialised training, career development) and which cover all the health sciences (Nursing, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, Medicine, Dentistry, Psychology, Veterinary Science, etc.). And to this end they have contacted a panel of experts and speakers who will offer the best of their experience and expertise. The provisional programme can be viewed at: http://www.um.es/web/ceuem/contenido/actividades/2014.

Topics to be covered will include the accreditation of degrees, the assessment of competencies, continuing education, multiprofessional training, research in medical education, portfolios, simulations, the mandatory core curriculum in specialised training, tutoring at graduate and postgraduate levels, and assessment of professional performance. As is usual at such events, a number of different workshops will be held on the day before the Congress, some of the most important being: the training of actors for ECOEs (objective structured clinical examinations), skills laboratories, the simulation classroom, the educational climate and distress among students, the assessment of clinical practice, assessment in specialised healthcare training, or how to assess competencies in clinical practice.

In any case we believe it would be wise to make a note of the dates of the congress in our diaries. The congress being organised by the University of Murcia has to be an important event for each of us because of the contents we ourselves contribute, and this depends more on the participants than on the organisers. One of the significant concerns of science is its diffusion through congresses and scientific journals. We have already made it quite apparent that medical education is an area of knowledge like any other and should therefore have the same means of expression as the others. Giving the congress a boost by participating in the workshops, through our communications or with our discussions at the round tables is a means of achieving personal improvement but above all it is yet another step forward in the pursuit of excellence in the training of healthcare professionals. Murcia awaits us.