Oslo, the beautiful capital of the Land of the Midnight Sun, hosted the 3rd World Congress of the International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG). The congress was a platform for an international gathering of primary care physicians as well as an interesting and interactive scientific meeting. We were honoured to be sponsored by SingHealth to participate and interact with our international friends.
The IPCRG is a group of primary care generalists who share a special interest in respiratory conditions. It is an international umbrella organisation of many national level primary care organisations, grouped together to promote primary care research and champion respiratory conditions in the international scene. Many of these primary care physicians also participate with research and are leading respiratory research in their own countries with a primary care focus.
Similar to all scientific meetings, the congress was divided into various segments, sessions and workshops that ran concurrently to meet the different needs of the participants. What was most exciting was their interactive nature of the congress as a whole. The plenary sessions started with an invited speaker, who introduced the theme of the day and illustrates two patients’ case studies with specific discussion points raised. The participants were then organised into small groups to share a five to ten minutes discussion highlights before the speaker rounds up the session. The international representation gave rise to very different prospectives and unique management strategies for the same medical condition in different parts of the world. An enlightening medical debate follows on common, accepted management, often taken for granted, follows to explore the evidence for and against them. E.g. Is there a role to screen for early chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)?
While we share the same basic medical knowledge and evidence based conclusions, our management for the same patient is clearly influenced by our respective primary care system and facilities available. With the abundance of clinical guidelines for respiratory conditions, many countries had moved to introduce office spirometry at the primary care level to empower them to provide a one-stop respiratory care and rehabilitation services to COPD and asthma patients short of hospitalisation and assisted respiration. Having a designated subsidised primary health care provider in many countries strengthens their doctor’s role to practice good, evidence based medicine and eliminate the abuse of medical resources via doctor-hopping seen in our local “walk-in” primary care system.
The poster presentations were also organised under the same common theme of the day with an interactive discussion session. The presenters under the common theme come together to give a one minute summary of their work and then face a question and answer session from fellow presenters and interested other interested participants. These presentations and discussions were then crystallized by the chairman of each session to the main theme of the day.
The congress closed on the 11th June 2006 with an invitation to the 4th IPCRG World Congress in Seville, Spain in 2008. The IPCRG hopes to attract more Asian participants by then and expand their organisation to truly represent the international primary care respiratory community.
Any trip to Norway cannot be complete without uncovering the traces left by the Vikings and sniffing out the trails of legendary trolls. A visit to the museums at Bygdoy peninsula and a scenic, fjord drive to Bergen concluded our short stay here.
We have learnt much from this interesting congress and benefited equally from the interactions with our international friends. Family Medicine today is evolving at a rapid pace across the world and these international interaction and experience gained can hopefully contribute towards the transformation of family medicine in Singapore.
