EDITORIAL

The 2009 AMEE Conference

Conferencia AMEE 2009

Madalena Patricio^a, Jordi Palés^b

^a Presidenta de AMEE. E-mail: patricio@fm.ul.pt
^b Presidente de SEDEM. E-mail: jpales@ub.edu

Medical education in general and specially in Europe is going through one of the most challenging phases of its existence due to the complexity of undergoing changes demanding a continuous effort towards adaptation and consequent reforms.

It is now widely accepted that medical education must cope with the determinants of present changes namely taking into account:

• Globalisation.

• Explosion of medical knowledge.

• Patient's new expectations, new demands, new rights.

• New teaching and learning technologies.

• Bologna process.

As ‘change for change sake' is no longer acceptable, the evaluation of the process under reform is therefore unavoidable, implying the analysis of the situation in order to answer questions like ‘why do we need to change', ‘what should be changed' ‘ when should we change' and ‘who should be the leader for change'.

The AMEE Annual Conference may play a fundamental role in terms of implementing change. Bringing together educationalists, teachers, students, researchers and other stakeholders, i.e. the whole medical education community, the conference offers participants the opportunity to update information about developments in medical education, discuss good practices and increase networking.

Moreover, the AMEE Annual Conference by its nature can be considered the international opportunity for collaborative learning with participants engaged in sharing the good lessons to be taken home towards a wider progress in medical education. Having this in mind SEDEM and FEM would like to stimulate to attend the 2009 AMEE Conference which will take place in Malaga from 29 August to 2 September.

A year before the deadline established by the Bologna Process for signatory countries to achieve the desired harmonisation the AMEE Conference in Malaga, bringing together medical and other health care professionals, constitutes an excellent opportunity for participants' updated on the latest trends in medical education and exchange experiences from their daily practice.

We promise you a challenging conference. Probably the biggest meeting in the world dedicated to medical education, the AMEE Conference covers:

• The continuum of education, from undergraduate/basic training, through postgraduate/specialist training to continuing professional development/continuing medical education.

• The continuum of professionals dealing with healthcare as multiprofessional education is a high theme at the AMEE Conference.

• The continuum of participants' profiles from new and experienced teachers to researchers, specialists, deans, administrators, policy-makers and of course students, who are playing an increasingly important role in AMEE Conference.

So far we have received 1780 abstracts for short communications and posters and 140 for workshops. Based on figures from last year Conference in Prague, where we had 2300 participants from more than 80 countries, we anticipate a fruitful discussion on the future for medical education based on richness of participants' experience.

AMEE 2009 will help us to approach the greatest challenge in medical education namely the way to move from a student centred to a transnational student-centred perspective, a change involving attitudes, values, and priorities in addition to technical and scientific competencies. At the AMEE in Malaga successful experiences will be shared among the medical education community so that participants can bring home ideas for implementing progress without necessarily having to ‘reinvent the wheel'.

The main topics of the Conference will be:

• Evidence based view on global health.

• Rethinking medical education.

• New horizons in simulation.

• Ethical issues in medical education research.

• Clinician/researcher meets educator.

• Global best practices in continuing medical education.

• Moral panic, political imperative and what the profession knows about the developing its new generations.

• Clinical learning.

• Evolution of clinical skills assessment.

• Competency based postgraduate education.

• Teaching basic sciences to students and residents.

• The Bologna process.

• New perspective on faculty development.

• International collaboration.

• Learning, assessment, technology: in that order.

It is a pleasure for the Spanish Society of Medical Education (SEDEM) to act this year as local host and to share our Nineteenth Meeting with the greatest International Meeting in Medical Education in the context of the constant excellent collaboration between AMEE and SEDEM.

This Joint meeting will devote different spaces and activities in Spanish, addressed especially to medical educators from cultural field of Spain and Latin-American. In these activities, important topics as the current curricular changes according to Bologna process, the ethic and social accountability of teachers and medical schools will be discussed. Otherwise some different workshops in Spanish will be developed, on different topics as the assessment of clinical competences or the postgraduate medical education.

From this editorial we want to stimulate medical educators to joint us and dot to miss this opportunity to participate in the most important world medical education conference, bringing their experiences and sharing them with colleagues from more of 80 countries.