Volume 5 - June 2016
A Message from the Director
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Dear European Medical Students, We are proud to present the 5th issue of the European Newsletter. Throughout Europe, many medical and non-medical students work on issues they are passionate about. IFMSA offers many opportunities and many great experiences. The purpose of this newsletter is to share these experiences within our region, and to encourage you to follow your passions. Besides an update about the work of the European Team, you will find articles submitted by students throughout Europe about different projects, events and experiences. We appreciate your contributions and hope to share some of your passion with other students throughout our Region. If you would like to be more involved in the work of IFMSA within Europe, please send an empty e-mail to ifmsa-europe-subscribe@ifmsa.org to subscribe to our mailing list.
We hope you enjoy reading this newsletter! Diogo Fernandes da Silva.
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Publisher International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) International Secretariat: c/o Academic Medical Center Meibergdreef 15 1105AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands Phone: +31 2 05668823 Email: gs@ifmsa.org Homepage: www.ifmsa.org
This is an IFMSA Publication Š 2016 - Only portions of this publication may be reproduced for non political and non profit purposes, provided mentioning the source.
European Strategy
One of the goals we set ourselves during this term was to create a Strategy for Europe. Why strategic planning though and why for our Region? Last year IFMSA created a strategic plan until 2017 on a global level and our Region took the first step by voting on priorities for external representation. Having a strategic plan has a lot of benefits despite the work you need to put into it. Looking at IFMSA and its Regions it is clear that we have a different background, a different number of NMOs and different needs and priorities. Europe now has 46 National Member Organizations (NMO) that need to be supported. Looking at this huge number the question we had to ask ourselves was: How? We have a new Regional Director and a new European Team every year. Furthermore, NMOs elect their boards at different times during our term, which means we have to work with different people during our term. Therefore, we wanted to create a strategic plan in accordance to the NMOs needs and priorities, in order to have a better understanding of what our Region needs and make it easier for future European
Teams to support the NMOs. By clearer defining tasks and goals, the work will become clearer and better defined not only to the Regional Team but also more transparent to the NMOs. During March Meeting we assessed the needs of the Region and started gathering objectives we wanted to accomplish. At the European Regional Meeting we took the next step and allowed NMOs to come up with their own ideas and discuss them with each other. At the end we voted on priorities. According to that list we plan to come up with a timeline that can be voted upon during August Meeting. The process so far has been very interesting but also somewhat difficult. Coming up with a strategic plan and involving the NMOs in the process while only meeting twice so far is not an easy task. A lot of the ideas are mostly suggestions on what can be accomplished on a national level while we will have to set these goals on a regional level. Creating a strategic plan for a Region is a first in IFMSA history and we learned a lot during the term. We are very
interested to see how this will turn out and if it will have the positive effect on our Region that we hope to achieve. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact us.
Diogo Fernandes da Silva, Regional Director email Daniel Mensinga, Development Assistant email Andrej Vujkovac, Capacity Building RA email
Beneficial Market testicles and also notified the visitors about cervical cancer, prostate cancer and protection from sexually transmitted diseases. For the joy of the tiniest of visitors the representatives The first Beneficial Market of from the Teddy Bear hospital skills took place in Medical came and garnered huge Garden in Bratislava on October success with life-like Winnie 17th, 2015. the Pooh. The beauty of the project lies Slovak Association of Students in its simplicity. In various of Pharmacy have also joined stands the useful, entertaining us and offered biochemical and cheerful skills are being measurement and consulting sold for small prices and service about the results. Of afterwards donated for course Youth of Slovak Red charity purposes. In 2015 we Cross, who taught how to decided to support the Clinic perform first aid, couldn´t be of children´s neurology in missing from an event like this. Children´s faculty hospital with Regarding the funny crafts, the polyclinic in Bratislava. We list was also full of interesting managed to raise 321€ for the offerings. Clinic itself and also to create an event, on which we have The visitors could learn to spread the word of SCORP, dance Latin American and gave away useful medical classic dances, folding origami, and common life skills and tie a tie, play chess, and learn have sweetened the day for how to write their name in everyone who came and visited Arabic or Japanese language our market. Every IFMSA or train yoga followed by a standing committee took part massage from a professional on the market. Representatives masseur. of Standing Committee on A magician impressed us Medical Education took their with his unbelievable tricks seats in teaching the right way and for even more fun we had of sewing the wounds, knotting a podium and music at our basic surgical knots, perform disposal. first aid at minor accidents and In conclusion I would like teaching few basic words in to point out to the public sign language. humanitarian collection for The Standing Committee on migrants which also took Reproductive Health presented place on this event. We were the right method of selfcollecting baby bottles, baby examination of breasts and
food, little baby packs, biscuits, and sanitary towels. This collection was supported by administrative department of Slovak Ombudsman. This material we received was then donated to Slovak organization called Tropic Team, who were providing medical care to migrants on Slovenian borders. We cannot wait until the Beneficial market of skills 2016, which will be even bigger, showier and more interesting. Hopefully, this way we will be able to establish a tradition of repeating beneficial event in Bratislava and inspire other associations to create many events like ours. This project was financially supported by Nadačný fond poradenskej spoločnosti PwC v Nadácii Pontis. Silvia Slopovska, SloMSA - Slovakia slopovskasilvia@gmail.com
Differential Diagnosis: Child Abuse & Neglect
We at Cerrahpasa, one of the local committees of Turkish Medical Students’ Association, we believe that the “Child Abuse and Neglect” lectures are insufficient in academic program of Turkey’s medical faculties. Therefore, we wanted to improve our education system on ‘child abuse and neglect’ and we talked about this subject with our professors and asked them to train us on this topic supplementary to our academic program. We, as the doctors of future, believe in acknowledging the abuse and having the responsibility of starting a proper progress when we experience this grave situation. We see that academic program is not enough to have the sufficient knowledge on “Child Abuse and Neglect”. So we started to plan our trainings in response to the request of the students.
We planned our trainings as multidisciplinary. Our professors from the departments of Forensic Medicine, Gynecology, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Neurosurgery, Pediatrics and Pediatric Surgery approved and joined us. Trainings are planned for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students of the medical faculty. We reached almost 85 eager students in our faculty! Our motivation is to sustain this attention and to start this training in whole medical faculties in Turkey. For this reason, we desire to make this training project in other faculties.
Furthermore, we want to inform the children and their families about Child Abuse and Neglect through our trainings. One of our main objectives is to raise awareness among them. We believe that everybody has something to stop the “Child Abuse and Neglect” and should strive to create an awareness for it. If we could make a little bit contribution about it, it will be great for us and children who are our future. Elif Gündeşelif TurkMSIC - Turkey gundes@hotmail.com
LGBT Week
Physiology, Anatomy, Neurology, Psychiatry, Paediatrics, they’re all fields related to Sexology and Sexuality, but in college all these subjects tend to tiptoe around Sexuality itself– not to mention LGTB sexuality. However, the truth is Sexuality plays a major role in any person’s life – and any person’s health, of course. But then again, it isn’t taught in Med School like many other topics, with hundreds of social taboos being the most likely explanation to his. The consequences of this massive ignorance in our curricula will be suffered in the future by our patients, and specially LGTB patients, and I thought this wasn’t something we should just accept and go on, but instead we should do something about it, at least a small contribution: LGTB Week became that small contribution – a week full of activities where Sevillian med students could learn more about this.
fellow students – moreover, AJIEMS was way less involved in a national level than it is now. Even so, I was decided to make LGTB Week a reality, so I kept going... but given this context, it’s no surprise that during our first editions, everything started to look like our negative prediction: we had just two or three students attending to the LGTB Week’s activities. We were almost considering not to do it this year, but in the end I thought that, even if no one came, it was an event I felt the moral duty to organise. And now I’m glad I did it, because this year it really changed: I convinced some friends to help me advertising it, so we could reach more students, and our effort was worth it when more than 30 people came to each of our activities – and not only Medicine students, but also from other colleges: future engineers, future teachers, future psychologists, future lawyers, etc.
Over these years, some of the lectures have been about trans people (by Spanish historic trans activist Mar Cambrollé), the different ‘therapies’ that have been said to ‘cure’ homosexuality (by Dr. García Arroyo, psychiatrist), lesbian When I first came up with this visibility (by NGO “DeFrente”), idea, it seemed to go nowhere, trans kids (by NGO “Chrysallis”) since we were only a few or about bullying (by NGO people in AJIEMS (our LC [Local “Triángulo”), along with the Committee] here in Seville), clinical training “LGTB Patients not really motivated and with & Prejudices” (by myself, since many difficulties to reach our I was given a similar training
from our former NORSA Adri) and several movie + debate activities. And what about the future? Well, in our last RI (one of IFMSA Spain’s two national meetings) we had a Project Fair where other LCs became interested our idea, and some of them even asked us to help them prepare it, and wondered if I could give the clinical training in their cities – you can imagine my both-blushed-andproud face in that moment! That encouraged us to spread this project all over the country through trainings in a national event that we’d host next year... step by step, this is hapenning guys! Pablo IFMSA-Spain pabloajiems@gmail.com
Pancake Day
It was february 2016 when few SCORPions from SloMSASlovakia felt horrified and incredibly sorry for current situation in Syria. Of course, that topic was on every second title in newspaper. You could hear about it every time you turned on the TV or radio. The Migrant crisis was just hot stuff, discussed by everybody everywhere. What concerned us even more was the one thing nobody talked about- what’s happening to those who couldn’t escape or didn’t want to flee from their homes? We couldn’t even imagine how terrible it must be when your home becomes your prison. So when one SCORPion came with a offer to cooperate with the organization SAVIO run by salesians in Slovakia and help people in Syria, we didn’t hesitate and started to think about possible ways of benefitial fundraising. After short brainstorming we had an idea- why not make this fundraising sweet? Even though helping others is sweet enough on its own. :) Each of the local committees in Bratislava decided to sweetfundraise in different ways but the goal remained the same.
15th of March BSM organized Pancake day for Syria- an event meant to be both benefitial and educational. During the entire day people came to grab a fresh pancake, baked directly at the place, and donate voluntary sum of money. Educational part of event was filled with various videos showing life during the Syrian conflict. You could learn more about the problem by games or discussions with SCORP girls or even with people of syrian origin. We weren’t quite sure what made the attendance so high- were the pancakes so delicious or did people actually care? It seemed to me that both statements are truepancakes were awesome and the place was sometimes fully crowded. 156 euro was raised. Incredible success. Another incredible success was waiting for benefitial fundraise Cake Mondays for Syria organized by my local committee- SM SZU We decided to bake various types of sweets one evening before the event, so it even had the benefits of teambuilding activity for our LC :) During the event people could come and choose type of cake they like-sweet or salt, chocolate or fruity, even raw and healthy was on the menu. Educational part was filled with discussions with SCORPions and short presentations with pictures from current situation in Syria. In a short time (just few hours
really) cakes were gone and cashbox full with 110 euro. People even came back and asked for more- not only cakes but information as well, which motivated me to make Cake Mondays for Syria again and make it regular event at our university. I love to see people caring about other people and not being oblivious towards what is happening outside our borders. I love to see love for humanity in people’s eyes and during this lovely event I saw it in every single person that stopped by- how they felt hurt when they saw other Syrians hurting, even though just in picture or video. Together we tried to help children and adolescents in Aleppo and Damascus, to help to provide them better homes, better education and to rebuild free-time centers, so they can have normal lives at least with that tiniest bit. Events like this remind me why it’s worthy of doing something more and motivate me to do even more. To be the change you want to see in the world. Katarina Bugarova SloMSA - Slovakia katka.bugarova@gmail.com
Public Health Week in Trondheim
Students of the professions medicine and psychology in Trondheim (Norway) reported a wish for common learning activities during their education, to make them better equipped for working together in teams to treat patients. The local IFMSA committee in Trondheim and the local organization for psychology students started a project to change this situation.
talked about sexuality after abuse. A representative from a help-centre for rape victims gave us valuable advice on how to help victims regain control of their lives and their sexuality. In the last lecture we invited Norwegian physician, sexologist and transgender person Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad to talk about sexual and gender identity. The last event was a workshop about anal sex with the Norwegian Health Board, to break down taboos. The activities were well attended, and received a lot of positive feedback from the participants.
become more known and more popular, with a broader audience including more health profession students, and gaining recognition from the municipality, the university and the hospital. Also, creating an arena of respect and understanding for students from medicine and psychology and initiating cooperation between the the organizations has been achieved.
We plan to expand this project even further. We want to include more health professions in the planning and conducting of the activity, and we would like to make The Public Health Week in the Public Health Week a We came up with the idea Trondheim has been conducted national project. One important to organize one week with twice, and about 500 medical goal for the near future is to lectures, workshops and and psychology students develop means to measure and social activities for medical have become familiar with the evaluate the long term impact and psychology students. competences of each others of the Public Health Week One of the goals of “Public professions, and a platform Trondheim. Are we reaching Health Week in Trondheim” is on which to build a better our goal of creating better to create a platform where the cooperation between the two cooperation between the two students can learn how to take professions has formed. professions, with increased advantage of each others skills, understanding and respect for Through the social activities knowledge and competences in better patient care? in which about 90 medical the future. With this project we and psychology students hope a foundation of respect took part, the students have Miriam Christ and understanding will develop, got to know each other a lot NMSA - Norway for better cooperation between better, and hopefully prejudices the two professions. miriam.s.christ@gmail.com about the other profession In 2015 the topic of the Public have subsided. This can make Health Week was “Sexual working together in the future Health”. The first lecture easier. addressed the topic “Normal What we can see already is Sexuality”. Psychologist Svein that communication between Øverland discussed “what is the two studies has become considered as normal, and more frequent and easier, when is something abnormal?” and the project itself has In the second lecture we
How to infect medical students with scepticaemia
Medical school is mostly about battling cynicism and frustration. PowerPoint karaoke, master classes that were outdated in the 90’s and a worrying lack of meaningful interaction with real patients plague our training. Our schools are unscientific, dogmatic and dehumanizing. So from time to time we consider dropping out of them, and in the meanwhile we slowly slip into cynicism and apathy in order to survive. In February 2016, several students, junior doctors and health professionals attended a Primary Care Innovation Seminar (SIAP) in Bilbao, Spain, to discuss how deeply emotional medical consultations were being managed. Medical training and its faults became a hot topic, so we tried to find a way out of this conundrum. We quickly came to the conclusion that, even among apathetic students and health care providers, some people manage to snap out of it and actively improve their training. And these people have no extraordinary qualities that set them apart, they just have been infected with scepticaemia. Scepticaemia is an uncommon
generalized disorder with low infectivity. In fact, Medical School is likely to confer lifelong immunity. The disease entails critical thinking and induces opposition to statements that have not been empirically substantiated. Its vaccination in our schools leads to a triple loss of critical thinking, ethics and proposals for improvement. However, this vaccination is not ideal. Luckily, a certain feeling of unease persists. Even the most scepticaemiaimmune students feel Medical Schools need some reworking. Some even want to facilitate this change, but are at a loss regarding the means to get there. We believe this urge can be channeled through concrete, simple and practical measures. Our “Guide: How to infect medical students with scepticaemia” pursues precisely that objective. We have selected and condensed a variety of suggestions that seek to reinstate critical thinking and humane ethics as the two main subjects which students must master. Because exemplary medical training can only be achieved through a synergy of science, conscience and courage.
Proposals are focused on students, as we believe a vigorous personal motivation is the base of all profound innovations. Individuals can only go so far, so strong and so interconnected partnerships, such as IFMSA, are firmly encouraged. Teachers are also targeted, as leading by example is such a far-reaching teaching method. The Guide, so far, has been widely shared among those who need it the least. Most student groups in Spain have already been infected with scepticaemia. We are now trying to breach herd immunity and get to every student, junior doctor and health professional in our country. Nevertheless, if we want to overcome cynicism and apathy worldwide, we need a pandemic of scepticaemia and similar projects. Translations of the Guide to English, Spanish and Portuguese are ready at our blog, and you are more than welcome to adapt and broadcast the Guide however you see fit. Paula Rodríguez Molino paularmolino@gmail.com Borja Apellaniz Aparicio borjaapap@gmail.com IFMSA-Spain
SRT - The Netherlands
It all started with an online meeting in the summer of 2015. A group of enthusiasts came together to talk about the possibilities of hosting an international meeting in The Netherlands again. After we had all attended a variety of international events ourselves, we had a strong desire to use our experiences and our creativity to organise a meeting ourselves and thereby give back to the world of medical students international that has given us so much the past years. We wanted to organise a meeting that would facilitate people to meet and really get to know each other, to discuss topics in depth and return home inspired. The first outlines of the event we wanted to organise were set, and we all recognised this was the beginning of a journey that would surely allow
us as organisers to learn and grow as well. We started our work that soon payed of in some of the first great milestones of our adventure; the approval of our proposal by our National General Assembly, contracting the hostel for the event and having our first real-life OC meeting. After all this it really started to sink in: this was actually happening! Even more inspiring was visiting the event location for the first time. Inspecting the hostel, envisioning the meeting happening there and walking around on the beach next to the hostel knowing what great opportunities this venue offered gave us great encouragement. And of course this
encouragement is necessary, as organising an event always comes with the struggle of keeping up motivation during late night meetings and staying energised while preparing all the paperwork for grant applications. While our journey continues, we are already proud to be able to say that we will welcome you to the pretty beach town Scheveningen for the IFMSA-NL Sub-Regional Training this November. We will certainly do our very best to let this event exceed all your expectations and let it be one of those international meetings that will always be an inspiring memory for you.
The IFMSA-NL SRT will take place from the 2nd until the 6th of November. More information can be found via the following link.
Laura Kalkman IFMSA-NL
Women are our most beautiful flowers system and contributes to a coordinated response to gender-based violence.
In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8) Srpska Medical Student`s International Committee (SaMSIC) invited students of the Faculty of Medicine and students from the other faculties to violence against women awareness-raising event on Saturday March 12, 2016. Some 70 people attended the event, organised by SCORP committee with the support of the University of Banja Luka, local NGO Udružene Žene, and the kind assistance of UNFPA and UNWOMEN, as well as a number of local commercial organizations. Lectures about violence and especially about violence against women spoke: Doctor Amela Lolić, vice-minister of Health and Social Welfare of the Republic of Srpska; Dijana Đurić, a psychologist at NGO Udružene Žene (‘United Women’) and Rosanne Anholt, Master in International Public Health, University “Vrije” in Amsterdam. Dr Lolić presented us with an elaborate report of publication named “Resource Package for Health Care Service Providers’ Response to Gender-based Violence in Republic of Srpska”, which recognizes the important role of the healthcare
Mrs. Đurić, spoke about the types of violence and the psychological impact of violence on women and children. She elaborated on the psychological profiles of both victims and aggressors, and addressed the risk factors for violence on the different levels. Guest from Amsterdam presented an international perspective on violence against women, illustrating the various forms in which violence against women occurs in different regions of the world. In addition, speakers have agreed that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in many other places around the world, domestic violence/intimate partner violence is often seen as a private matter, in which the police or others should not interfere. Conclusion is that if we want to effectively address violence against women,
then there need to be more effective collaboration between relevant stakeholders, such as the healthcare system, government, criminal justice system, safe houses. Numerous questions asked by participants proved us that we had done good job. At the end of lectures we awarded certificates to participants and joined a cocktail. Organizing committee is very satisfied because it had opportunity to organize this event and we hope that we would organize more similar events in the future. PS: Women are our most beautiful flowers! Božidar Barać SaMSIC - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Republic of Srpska
barac.bozidar@gmail.com
Your Euro Team 2015-2016
Diogo, Regional Director
Katerina, SCOME RA
Ana-Maria, SCORE co-RA
Daniel, Development Assistant
Maud, SCOPE RA
Ester, SCORE co-RA
Naomi, General Assistant
Ella, SCOPH RA
Dorien, SCORP co-RA
Andrej, Capacity Building RA
Anna, SCORA co-RA
Pablo, SCORP co-RA
IFMSA International Federation of Medical Students Associations
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Ghana (FGMSA) Greece (HelMSIC) Grenada (IFMSA-Grenada) Guatemala (ASOCEM) Guinea (AEM) Guyana (GuMSA) Haiti (AHEM) Honduras (ASEM) Hungary (HuMSIRC) Iceland (IMSIC) Indai (MSAI) Indonesia (CIMSA-ISMKI) Iran (IMSA) Iraq (IFMSA-Iraq) Iraq - Kurdistan (IFMSA-Kurdistant) Irelend (AMSI) Israel (FIMS) Italy (SISM) Jamaica (JAMSA) Japan (IFMSA-Japan) Jordan (IFMSA-Jo) Kazakhstan (KazMSA) Kenya (MSAKE) Korea (KMSA) Kuwait (KuMSA) Latvia (LaMSA) Lebanon (LeMSIC) Libya (LMSA) Lithuania (LiMSA) Luxembourg (ALEM) Malawi (UMMSA) Mali (APS) Malta (MMSA) Mexico (IFMSA-Mexico) Moldova (ASRM) Mongolia (MMLA) Montenegro (MoMSIC) Morocco (IFMSA-Morocco) Namibia (MESANA) Nepal (NMSS) New Zealand (NZMSA) Nigeria (NiMSA) Norway (NMSA) Oman (SQU-MSG)
Pakistan (IFMSA-Pakistan) Palestine (IFMSA-Palestine) Panama (IFMSA-Panama) Paraguay (IFMSA-Paraguay) Peru (APEMH) Peru (IFMSA-Peru) Philippines (AMSA-Philippines) Poland (IFMSA-Poland) Portugal (PorMSIC) Romania (FASMR) Russian Federation (HCCM) Russian Federation - Tatarstan (TaMSA) Rwanda (MEDSAR) Serbia (IFMSA-Serbia) Sierra Leone (SLEMSA) Singapore (AMSA-Singapore) Slovakia (SloMSA) Slovenia (SloMSIC) South Africa (SAMSA) Spain (IFMSA-Spain) Spain - Catalonia (AECS) Sudan (MedSIN-Sudan) Sweden (IFMSA-Sweden) Switzerland (swimsa) Taiwan (FMS) Tanzania (TAMSA) Thailand (IFMSA-Thailand) The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (MMSA) The Netherlands (IFMSA-NL) Tunisia (Associa-Med) Turkey (TurkMSIC) Uganda (FUMSA) Ukraine (UMSA) United Arab Emirates (EMSS) United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (MedSIN) United States of America (AMSA) Uruguay (IFMSA-URU) Uzbekistan (AMSA-Uzbekistan) Venezuela (FEVESOCEM) Zambia (ZAMSA) Zimabbwe (ZIMSA)
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