Date: Wednesday, 7 July 2021

Time: 10:30 – 12:00 CEST

Chair: Nynke Scherpbier, Bert Aertgeerts

Speakers: Frans Rutten, Nicolas Delvaux, Trudy van der Weijden

Description:

This round table combines short clarifying presentations with the opportunity to practice with state-of-the art infographics of new diabetic treatment and a “shared decision making” tool for people already taking statins to define their risks. More than 40 years ago, General Practitioners have initiated the development of clinical practice guidelines in Primary Care. We are now in transition from EBM and guidelines towards Shared Decision Making and, lately, using patient reported outcomes and big data (value-based health care). This round table show you our learning curve of projects on implementation of Shared Decision Making for patients with cardiovascular risks. We will focus on the main challenges that we now face in being inclusive to all patients. We face the complex problems of communicating risks and benefits effectively, especially for doctors with limited numeracy and patients with limited health literacy. We face the complex problems of making trade-offs between initiating drug treatment and lifestyle change. We face the challenges of really getting to the heart of the matter; to align our counselling to what matters most to the patient in his or her goals in quality of life and preferences for treatment modalities. Combining beautiful infographics and SDM tools from the BMJ Rapid Recommendations with excellent speakers and the opportunity to experience the real stuff, it will be MAGIC.

Date: Wednesday, 7 July 2021

Time: 17:30 – 19:00 CEST

Chairs: Nele Michels, Patrick Bindels

Speakers: Nisreen Alwan, Maria van den Muijsenbergh

Description:

In this session the main focus is to enable participants to have discussions with colleagues on three items:

1. How are we managing COVID-19 in our daily clinical work?
2. How are we facing the challenges of the long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19 often referred to as Long COVID-19?
3. What are the problems and possible solutions for managing COVID-19 in migrants?

This session will start with presentations then go into breakout rooms enabling you to listen, share and reflect upon experiences from colleagues across Europe.

During the presentations, Dr. Nisreen Alwan, an associate professor from the University of Southampton, will inform you of the long-term effects of COVID-19. A considerable number of patients are suffering from long COVID-19. She will discuss the challenges of this new syndrome and its implications for daily practice.

Prof Maria van den Muijsenbergh, an academic GP from the Netherlands, has extensive experience in caring for refugees and other vulnerable migrants. In her talk, she will highlight some specific issues when caring for migrant patients with COVID-19. Her practical tips will help GPs to provide person-centered culturally sensitive care for their patients.

This Round Table will enable you to exchange views, discuss different approaches and learn from each other. In short, the very reason many of you decided to join this WONCA congress!

Date: Thursday, 8 July 2021

Time: 17:30 – 19:00 CEST

Chairs: Roar Maagaard, Niek de Wit

Speakers: Henk van Weert, Dick Willems

Description:

During the last years some decision tools on the detection of cancer have been published. Examples are the Q-cancer risk scores for all patients in practice and the Caper-studies on the risks of patients with alarm symptoms. The impression however is, that these instruments are not used on a regular basis and, if used this happens mostly unconsciously.

Meanwhile survival increased, probably not only because of better therapy, but also of earlier detection (by introduction of screening and by increased symptomatic detection). However, this increase is not very impressive, about 10% in 40 years which led to current survivor rate of 60%.

In this round table we will approach this world wide problem on three ways. Firstly we will explore why general practitioners underuse current detection algorithms and we will present a future, where artificial intelligence might help the GP to refer patients with cancer earlier. The question however will be: on what costs? We will discuss this both clinically as well as from a societal and ethical perspective.

To end with we will try to gain understanding on how we make decisions, how much uncertainty do we think is acceptable and are formulated referral thresholds helpful.

We hope to end with some conclusions and some sort of an agenda for the future.

Date: Friday, 9 July 2021

Time: 10:30 – 12:00 CEST

Chairs: Henriette van der Horst, Dimity Pond

Speakers: Dimity Pond, Cees Hertogh, Carlos Martins

Description:

Nowadays, both governments and doctors are paying a lot of attention to prevention in order to diminish the burden of disease and thus keep health care sustainable and affordable. The first question is on which preventive activities we should focus when providing care for older people, especially the very old. Should quaternary prevention, protecting people from overmedicalization, be our main goal? The downside of quaternary prevention might be that we take or are misinterpreted as taking a ‘laissez faire, laissez passer’ approach of not providing enough care for our patients. How do we achieve a balance and how do we discuss this with patients? Secondly, what are the ethical dilemmas in discussing advance care planning with patients who have been recently diagnosed with dementia, and in discussing this with their families? When and how should we proceed with advance care planning? Which issues should be covered, which issues should perhaps be avoided? In this Round Table we will explore both themes in-depth, after the two plenary speakers have provided us with food for thought. In small groups, we will have two rounds of discussion on an assignment for each theme which will be introduced by Dimity Pond.

Date: Saturday, 10 July 2021

Time: 12:30 – 14:00 CEST

Chairs: Maria van der Muijsenberg, Kenenth Eaton

Speakers: Loes van Bokhoven, Leen De Coninck, Karolien van den Brekel

In collaboration with: Paula Vassallo, Metka Zitnic, Diederik Aarendonk

Organised by the European Forum for Primary Care (EFPC)

Description:

Health care professionals often work remotely from each other and do not have much time to meet together face-to-face. The use of digital platforms could improve interprofessional collaboration and sharing of professional knowledge and expertise, which is particularly important with and around patients with complex diseases or psychosocial conditions. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the necessary technical, legal as well as ethical conditions to create effective, safe, and yet easily accessible digital platforms for interprofessional collaboration, in particular when also aiming to include patients and their informal caregivers. Existing knowledge is not widely spread between disciplines and countries.  As the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the rapid growth of remote care and collaboration, it is urgent to address the challenges of developing and implementing effective interprofessional platforms.

However, given the additional workload of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Primary Care professionals will feel they lack the time or energy to start such a platform. To keep the Primary Care workforce up and running we want to share opportunities with you and exchange good experiences in order to improve the working mood. Let yourself surprise by the solutions of others!

Aim of the Round Table

After the Round Table, the participants will know: How one can achieve online interprofessional collaboration, that will improve care and yet reduce stress among Primary Care professionals.

Methods

• Plenary Introduction (10 mins) – Leen De Coninck

OT’s approach to interprofessional collaboration as an added value to the patient and goal-oriented care

• Introduction on the questions to be discussed in the groups (5 mins) Maria van den Muijsenbergh
• Discussion/debates in small groups (5) on the above statements/questions (15 mins): Wishes and experiences in relation to working remotely and professional health; what could online platforms provide us?
• Plenary: examples of taking care of professional health in the new reality of online connections, max 5 minutes each. (20 mins)
  • Interprofessional response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Malta.
  • Belgian interprofessional EBP platform for Primary Care.
  • GP in a local community health network “working with broad health perspective Positive Health” in Holland
  • Caring for Nursing Homes in COVID-19 mode in remote areas in Slovenia

• Discussion/debates in small groups (20 mins):

Groups will discuss the examples provided and link these to their own practice.

Asking the participants for lessons learned, criticism’s, suggestions for improvements based on the showed examples

• Group reports Conclusion/Take Home messages (15 mins)

Results and conclusions

After this Round Table participants will be refreshed and see new opportunities to profit from colleagues working at the Primary Care level, in their own practice but also elsewhere and from the different professional and geographical backgrounds.

The organisers of the Round Table will have collected more material for their COST-action proposal on promoting interprofessional collaboration by digital platforms.