Family Practice Advance Access originally published online on July 8, 2005
Family Practice 2005 22(5):576-577; doi:10.1093/fampra/cmi059
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Correspondence |
The WONCA World Congress 2004 did not meet academic standards
a Research Unit for General Practice and b Department of General Practice, University of Aarhus, Vennelyst Boulevard 6, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Correspondence to Peter Vedsted, Email: p.vedsted{at}alm.au.dk
Introduction
Encouraged by participating in the world's largest gathering ever of family doctors and of having fruitful academic profits, we travelled the long way from Denmark to the WONCA 2004 World Congress in Orlando, Florida.1 We had all prepared posters and oral presentations, the weather was perfect and the setting ideal.
Aim of the WONCA World Congress
Among other missions WONCA seeks to "foster and maintain high standards of care in general practice/ family medicine by ... representing the educational, research and service provision activities of general practitioners/family physicians ...".2 That is, the object of WONCA is to promote high levels of research and development. We have seen the WONCA congresses as an international setting where GPs can meet, present, hear and discuss scientifically sound results and interpretations of research and development. In addition, the social dimension is a very important feature of such a gathering of GPs from many countries. However, in our opinion this WONCA congress did not meet our expectations.
Having an abstract accepted actually gives younger researchers an attractive opportunity to experience that presenting one's research is an important part of being a scientist. By attending, the researcher is trained in academic behaviour and in asking and answering scientific questions in front of an audience. However, in order to ensure that both presenters and audience feel that it is worth their while, a high academic standard must be maintained.
Impressions from the 2004 congress
It was a shock to realize that only very few attended the scientific sessions. For instance, at one of the first parallel sessions the audience included only four, exclusive of the moderator and two speakers. In addition, the moderator was late and three of the five speakers did not turn up. Unfortunately, this was not the only time that moderators, speakers and poster presenters did not show up and the audience consisted of a handful. It was quite a common phenomenon that the presentations did not meet the minimum standard of research one could expect at a world congress. Some presenters did not show up at the session until their turn came, then gave a poor presentation and left after their "thank you". Similarly, many of the registered posters were never displayed. We have all participated in many congresses, but this congress touched bottom.
Is this the way forward?
The poor academic performance and the poor attendance presented a sharp contrast to the large setup and the high fees, and considering that the WONCA 2004 was the only world congress on family medicine, it was very disappointing. We invested time, energy and funding on preparing our presentations and on attending.
Our younger researchers got the wrong impression of a scientific congress, did not become acquainted with true scientific culture, and did not get experience in presenting scientific work. Consequently, the poor academic benefit of the conference forces us reconsider our participation in future WONCA congresses. Is this the way forward for the WONCA World Congress?
Suggestions for improvement
It seems clear that something must be done to optimise the academic and interpersonal outcome of a WONCA World congress. It is vital for family medicine as an academic discipline that our finest congress meets the same academic standard as the congresses of other medical specialities. As the only world society for general practice/family medicine, WONCA should not accept a reputation as a place where all contributions are accepted, where presenters and chairmen do not show up and the academic standard is low. This will unavoidably mean that academic family medicine will maintain its last place position among medical specialities.
If we agree about the WONCA aims, there are some possible solutions. First, the abstracts should be subject to more rigorous peer review to raise the scientific level. This will inevitably, at least for some time, result in fewer, but also better scientific presentations. Moreover, this may again increase the number of attendees because of the smaller number of sessions, reduce the number of cancellations, motivate the moderators, stimulate discussion and facilitate the establishing of relations between researchers.
Secondly, it may be concluded that the traditional academic presentation of research has become obsolete. We may have to improve the presentation of research and development.
The third possibility is to establish a scientific world society to promote research in general practice, e.g. something like The European General Practice Research Network.
Our wishes
We imagine an inspiring and encouraging research network with participants from all over the world. Within this framework we can foster and maintain high standards of care in general practice/family medicine. Decisions on the future role of the WONCA World Congress lie in the hands of the WONCA World conference organizers and we all look forward to hearing more.
References
1 WONCA 2004. The 17th World Conference of Family Doctors. Available at www.wonca2004.org (accessed 4 April 2005).
2 Wonca Online. Wonca Mission. Available at www.globalfamilydoctor.com/aboutWonca/ (accessed 4 April 2005).
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