Dear colleagues,
The World Psychiatric Congress held in Mexico on September 27-30th was a success. The programme of Early Career Psychiatrists was intense, so there was less time to explore Mexico City. I have seen just a little, I mean pyramids, beaches and other places are unforgettable. People were nice. But that was not the main reason of the journey, so let’s take a look on my tasks.
The presentation of EFPT was held on Friday 28th, I think there could be around 100 people in the audience. I started it asking 3 questions with the small excercise: “Raise your hand, if you never heard about EFPT, raise your hand if you are still a trainee, raise your hand if you are from non-european country”. The audience was really heterogenous, many participans were from Latin-America and Asia and they approached me with great interest in EFPT, asking me if they can attend such forum as observers. Few people were really interested to create National Trainee Association in their homeland, even one of the young trainees from Mexico told me there is nothing like this kind of platform and he wants to find out how he can make a first step forward. He got the contact to our MENTA working group. Each of our working group had a small advertisement in the presentation. I emphasized mainly the projects which could be interested for a worldwide audience, such as Exchange programme, “Brain drain study”, Psychiatry Across Borders with its transcultural psychiatric interview workshop being in preparation, or the Psychotherapy guidebook our trainees created in past year. The Eco-Friendly EFPT project was not forgotten!
I had important talks with Prof. Sartorius, Dr. Beezhold, Dr. Pinto da Costa. We confirmed plans and talked more in details about EFPT Prague forum 2019. Prof. Sartorius will prepare a lecture about tasks and challenges which are waiting for us-trainees in psychiatry. This is not going to be his only input next year, which I very much appreciate. I will update you in separate email soon. Dr. Beezhold and Dr. Pinto da Costa belongs traditionally to EFPT and I am glad and ready to continue with this tradition.
I was also chairing a “Meet the Expert Session” with Dr. Vladimir Poznyak. If you are interested in addiction, this is a good person to listen to. Very understandable. True expert, and even though he is mainly involve in policies with WHO, he talks in a very clinical way.
It was my first international event to represent EFPT in my year of presidency. I am proud of you. It is easy to talk about us, because the organisation and specially the people have a lot to offer.
Keep going and see you or hear you soon.
Pavel
