gms | German Medical Science

GMS Journal for Medical Education

Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung (GMA)

ISSN 2366-5017

GMA Annual Conference 2011 in Munich – Conference Report

conference report medicine

  • corresponding author Anja Görlitz - GMA-Team Jahrestagung 2011, LMU München, Medizinische Klinik Innenstadt, München, Deutschland
  • author Daniel Bauer - LMU München, Medizinische Klinik Innenstadt, Lehrstuhl für Didaktik und Ausbildungsforschung in der Medizin, München, Deutschland
  • author Martin Reincke - LMU München, Medizinische Klinik Innenstadt, Direktor, München, Deutschland
  • author Martin R. Fischer - LMU München, Medizinische Klinik Innenstadt, Lehrstuhl für Didaktik und Ausbildungsforschung in der Medizin, München, Deutschland; Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung, Vorsitzender des Vorstandes, Erlangen, Deutschland
  • GMA-Team Jahrestagung 2011 - LMU München, Medizinische Klinik Innenstadt, München, Deutschland

GMS Z Med Ausbild 2011;28(4):Doc47

doi: 10.3205/zma000759, urn:nbn:de:0183-zma0007599

This is the English version of the article.
The German version can be found at: http://www.egms.de/de/journals/zma/2011-28/zma000759.shtml

Received: November 10, 2011
Revised: November 10, 2011
Accepted: November 11, 2011
Published: November 15, 2011

© 2011 Görlitz et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.


Introduction

More than 500 participants gathered under the motto of Teaching, learning, testing: From dissonance to a triad? from 5th to 8th October 2011 at the Annual Conference of the Society for Medical Education (GMA) at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich.

Under the patronage of the Minister for Science Wolfgang Heubisch and the two conference presidents Martin Reincke and Martin Fischer, 32 workshops and 251 scientific contributions on projects and research in medical undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education offered a broad and varied program. All papers were subjected to a critical review process by three referees in advance. The abstracts of all scientific papers were published for the conference via the GMS and are available from http://www.egms.de/dynamic/en/meetings/gma2011/index.htm.

16 exhibitors and sponsors were also represented at the annual conference. We were also able to welcome the German Research Foundation and the Robert Bosch Stiftung as sponsors. The number of participants and the contributions of our sponsors underlines the increasing importance of medical undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education in Germany.


Programme

The scientific program was rounded off by the pre- and post-conference workshops and the GMA committee meetings. Particularly noteworthy is the newly formed committee on Inter-professional Education in Health Professions which aims to foster new connections between training courses across the boundaries of individual professions.

The presentations of the invited speakers (Brian Hodges, Toronto, Canada; Olle ten Cate, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Christiane Spiel, Vienna, Austria and Frank Fischer, Munich) on models of medical under- and postgraduate education, professionalism, acquisition and assessment of competences, evaluation of teaching and collaborative learning created valuable impulses for a multi-perspective discussion. The invited speaker lectures were recorded and are available on the conference website at http://www.gma2011.de. The 12 lecture sessions and 12 poster sessions hailed from eight main categories:

1.
Faculty and Curriculum Development,
2.
Learning Target Development,
3.
Practical Skills,
4.
Communication and Social skills,
5.
New Media and Simulation,
6.
Assessment,
7.
Student Selection and
8.
Postgraduate and Continuing Education.

Of course the GMA social evening, by now a tradition, also took place. With some 240 people present at the Augustiner Bräu beer celler in downtown Munich, everyone had a chance to talk to everyone over a hearty Bavarian buffet.

As part of the social evening the GMA award winners were honored by Eckhart Hahn, Sören Huwendiek and Sandra Zeuner (see Figure 1 [Fig. 1]).

The 2011 winners were:

GMA Award for teaching students:

Annemiek Leson: “Improving basic skills in cardiac medical studies. An exemplary empirical analysis based on the development and implementation of an extracurricular, student-led tutorial in the Marburg Interdisciplinary Skills Lab (Maris)”

GMA Award for Young Teachers:

Dr. Nicole Rafai, Aachen: “Variety of methods in Complete Dentures - Curricular Options for a Clinically-oriented Preclinical Course”

Dr. Thomas Shiozawa, MME, Tübingen: “Development and Evaluation of Combined Professional and Didactic Training for the Tutors of the Dissection Course”

On Friday evening, each poster could again be scrutinized and discussed at the poster party. The GMA posters prizes were awarded on Saturday at the final event by Martin Fischer. Each poster was judged on the basis of a criteria list by the heads of each session and the best poster was nominated for each session. The nominated 12 posters were assessed by seven board members of the GMA using the same criteria list. Each reviewer named his or her three favourites.

The three joint GMA poster winners were:

  • Thomas Brendel, Sophie Niedermaier, Christian Lottspeich, Stephanie Keil, Christian Kowalski: “Creating wider awareness of proper hygiene practice at the bedside through interactive editing of an educational film”
  • Kirsten Gehlhar, Christoph Stosch, Kathrin Klimke-Young, Martin R. Fischer: “Do different medical curricula have an impact on the students’ clinical thinking?”
  • Jan Kiesewetter, Lisa Kühne Eversmann, Bernadette Aulinger, Anja Görlitz, Stephanie Keil, Sophie Niedermaier, Christian Lottspeich, Frank Fischer, Martin R. Fischer: “Development of an observation instrument for simulation-based teamwork in medical education”

The conference ended by a presentation of the conference highlights by Reinhard Putz, Götz Fabry and Claudia Kiessling who critically analysed and summarised their impressions on the conference.


GMA Members’ Meeting and Election of Officers

The scientific program aside, the GMA Members’ Meeting was held on 07 October. There were 210 voting GMA members present. The following new board was elected for three years:

  • Chairman of the Board: Prof Martin R. Fischer, MME, Munich
  • Deputy Chairman: Prof. Sigrid Harendza, MME, Hamburg
  • Secretary: Dr. Thomas Shiozawa, MME, Tübingen
  • Treasurer: Dr. Markus Gulich, MSc, Ulm.
  • Faculty Observer: Prof. Matthias Siebeck, MME, Munich
  • Student Body Observer: Mathis Gittinger, Duisburg-Essen
  • Veterinary Medicine Observer: Dr. January Ehlers, MSc., Hanover
  • Dentistry Observer: Prof. Rainer Haak, MME, Leipzig
  • Austrian Observer: Dr. Karen Pierer, MME, Innsbruck
  • Swiss Observer: Dr. Christian Schirlo, MME, Zurich
  • Chairman of the Advisory Board: Prof. Thorsten Schäfer, MME, Bochum
  • Auditors: Dr. Johannes Schulze (Frankfurt), Prof. Florian Eitel (Munich)

Acknowledgements and Outlook

We would like to thank all who have made the annual conference possible with their enthusiasm and dedication. In particular, we would like to mention Mrs Herrmannsdörfer of the GMA Office in Erlangen, the GMS employees in Cologne and the company Eurokongress in Munich on everyone else.

The GMA Annual Conference 2012 will take place from 27-29.09.2012 in Aachen and will have the motto “Medical Education - International, Interdisciplinary and Inter-professional”. Further information is available at http://www.gma2012.de.


Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.