Report
The motto (see Figure 1 (Fig. 1)) these topics was the focus of the annual conference
of the GMA, held from September 25-27, 2014, in Hamburg, Germany. Almost 700 participants
met in the “Campus Lehre”, the main teaching facility of the University Medical Center
Hamburg-Eppendorf, to learn and discuss in 118 lectures, 21 workshops, 18 GMA committee
meetings, and with 200 posters what is new in scientific teaching. Beside the interesting
lectures and poster presentations, the excellent keynote speakers provided the audience
with food for thought: Jonathan Silverman from Cambridge talked about teaching in
clinical communication, Geoff Norman from McMaster distinguished between effective
and less effective means to improve medical education at universities. Hans-Jochen
Heinze, chairman of the Medicine Committee of the German Council of Science and Humanities,
committedly presented the council’s current recommendations for the advancement of
medical education in Germany. Olaf von dem Knesebeck (UKE) and Victor Oubaid of the
German Aerospace Center completed the programme with thoughts on how to educate socially
competent medical doctors and on the possibility of transferring knowledge gained
in flight security and pilot selection to medical education and student admission
tests.
Fortunately, the GMA annual conferences have been growing continuously over the past
years, and during the meeting in Hamburg, the 1,000th society member was received!
It proved to be a major logistic challenge to arrange all contributions evaluated
by the more than 40 reviewers reasonably between Thursday afternoon and Saturday lunchtime.
The generous spaciousness of the site of the meeting (see Figure 2 (Fig. 2)) allowed
the temporal separation of the various types of contributions such as poster tours
and short lectures, though. Thus, we were able to ensure the participants’ full attention
for all formats. This was only possible by placing the committee meetings and workshops
outside of the actual congress time. In case that the interest in the GMA and our
annual conferences continues to grow, a prolongation of the congress time might be
worth considering.
Otherwise, there is a risk that an increasing parallelization of sessions might give
way to conflicts of interest with the participants. In the future, the size of the
event already reached will probably go along with growing demands on the organizing
faculties with regard to financing, space offer, or participant management. The organization
might be simplified by transferring some special tasks to the GMA office or to a consistent
congress organizer.
From our point of view, the poster tours (see Figure 3 (Fig. 3)) especially benefitted
from the separation of the various contribution types: Many attendees intensively
discussed the individual works exhibited in different rooms – and evaluated them for
the awarding of the poster prizes. The poster rated best in each poster tour, respectively,
made it into the second round, in which an expert panel selected the poster award
winners (see Figure 4 (Fig. 4)): Congratulations! The awards and awardees were celebrated
during a long poster barbecue night.
Interprofessionalism is a topic with ever growing significance for the GMA. With generous
support from the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Robert Bosch Foundation) we were able to promote
the cross-curricular and cross-professional integration of education and advanced
training in all health professions by means of a workshop, lectures, posters, and
a specific poster award (see Figure 4 (Fig. 4)). As part of the board elections during
the GMA member assembly, Professor Ursula Walkenhorst was accepted as an advisory
board member.
For 390 guests, a very special event was the social evening spent aboard the paddle
steamer Louisiana Star, where they enjoyed a maritime buffet accompanied by jazz music
(see Figure 5 (Fig. 5)). There was great applause at the presentation of the GMA Awards
for Young Teachers and Student Teachers (see Figure 6 (Fig. 6) and Figure 7 (Fig.
7)).
Afterwards, all landlubbers could witness the nightly activity in Germany’s largest
port from the upper deck.
Did you miss any contributions presented at the GMA 2014? Please visit http://www.gma2014.de/programm.html
to find the programme and the abstract book. In addition, many participants made use
of the first-time offered possibility to upload their presentations or complete posters
at https://gesellschaft-medizinische-ausbildung.org/tagungen/2014-hamburg/abstracts.html:
Just take a look!
Now, all the positive feedback leaves us wanting more: We wish Rainer Haak and his
team many participants and good luck with the next GMA conference to be held in Leipzig,
Germany, from September 30th to October 3rd, 2015. The meeting will be fused with
the annual conference of the “Arbeitskreis zur Weiterentwicklung der Lehre in der
Zahnmedizin” (Working Group for the Advancement of Dental Education), and we look
forward to a happy reunion there!
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.