Dr Pavlo Kolesnyk of Ukraine - Montegut Scholar
Dr Pavlo Kolesnyk PhD MD, from Ukraine, reports on being the second European Montegut scholar. His scholarship enabled him to attend the WONCA Europe Vienna conference in July 2012. Pavlo is currently the Assistant Professor (Docent) of Uzhgorod National University; a practicing family doctor of the city Family Clinic; a trainer of doctors during their residency and internship and the head of the Family Medicine Course at the Academic Department.
The Montegut Global Scholars Program
The Montegut Global Scholars Program (MGSP) was established by the American Board of Family Medicine Foundation (ABFM-F), in April 2010. It was named in honor of Alain Montegut, MD, a member of the Board of Directors of the ABFM from 2005 to 2010 and WONCA North America region president from 2007 to 2010.
The MGSP was established to foster international education, research and collaboration, in the specialty of family medicine. It supports the attendance of one family physician from each of the seven regions of the international organisation of family physicians (WONCA) to their regional meetings or to the international meeting in the year when it is held. In years when the local region does not hold a meeting it will be permissible for the nominee from that region to use the scholarship to attend a meeting in another region.
Dr Kolesnyk’s experience
It has been a great luck and experience for me to visit this outstanding meeting of family doctors from all over the world. I met with many interesting people; I had the chance to learn much about new achievements in science and practice of family medicine; as well as I could observe the new ways of presenting information and interactive work with the audience.
1. New experience from Workshops:
Of all the workshops attended during the Congress I have been mostly impressed by the following :
* Workshops: IPCRG workshop on strategies towards smoking cessation. (The new way of smoking prevention intervention as brief intervention is a practical step that I am going to use both in my practice as well as in my academic course for residents).
* Learning coaching skills for family doctors: a new perspective. This was a nice presentation of the ways of working with patients and of presenting the information. The “wheel of life”, interactive game is supposed to change the living philosophy and it could be useful to memorize these methods and to spread the idea among my residents.
*Academy for sexual health. It was a useful experience to know more about sexual problems, as well as to understand that our family doctor’s training program practically ignores this field of medicine and I have to improve my knowledge in this field and have to add it into my training course.
*The Hippokrates Exchange Programme: A Vasco da Gama Workshop. It was useful to know about these exchange possibilities and I am going to spread this information among my residents and young doctors.
2. New experience from the Lectures
For me as an academic trainer of family doctors it was very interesting to learn the modern approach to Congress organizing and lecturing and to know interactive ways of presenting information. The lectures Age-dependent D-dimer cut-off values and Facilitated physical activity as a treatment for depressed adults are a great example of implementing evidence-based medicine into family medicine practice and also can be used in my practice as well as in my scientific life.
I liked the idea of combining Art and Practice in Family Medicine as a main topic of the whole Congress.
3. Activities
During the program I’ve was able to become acquainted with the daily routine and organizational methods of the Austrian family doctor’s clinic. It was a good experience to see the family medicine practice where modern instrumental methods of patient investigation were combined with the old-fashioned ways of treatment on the elderly patient’s demands.
4. Joint efforts
Attending the Congress activities I had a lot of chances to get in touch with many family doctors and scientists from different countries. We exchanged information about family medicine organization in our countries and discussed ways for future collaboration. Thanks to daily close contacts with Austrian doctors, I know more about the rich culture of Austria. I can express only a highly positive opinion about all social event and workshops I had the chance to attend.
5. New views
Because of this program I became more convinced that doctors in my country should try harder to improve the quality of healthcare, to search for the possibilities to visit other countries, to get more international experience in order to implement it into Ukrainian health care system.
I am planning to perform Training Family Medicine Center in my country, therefore knowledge and experience gained during this program might definitely help me to achieve my goals. To create The Trancarpathian regional training center of family medicine using new knowledge gained in Vienna, I would like to establish contacts with the Society of Rural Medicine; to establish contacts and to become a member of EURACT – organization of family doctors trainers; to visit the university training center in Turkey; to implement the received international experience into the practice of the new established training center of family medicine.
Dr Pavlo Kolesnyk