The V International Congress on Medical Education (CIEM 2019) was held in Lima, Peru, from May 30 to June 1st and was organized by the Asociación Peruana de Facultades de Medicina (ASPEFAM). It is one of the most relevant events in the field, discussing pertinent topics in the education of the future doctors of the country and of Latin America, taking into account a context of growing changes and challenges. The Congress was attended by approximately one thousand participants, among which were students, university teachers and medical school deans.
The event organized international conferences, round tables, symposiums and presentations of papers on topics of interest for the students and future medical professionals, such as the quality of medical education, curricular integration, research and scientific publication, training for the First Level of Health Care, the competences of Medical Residencies, among others.
BIREME had a relevant participation in the scientific programming of the event and was represented by its Director, Dr. Diego González, by the Scientific Communication Coordinator, Dr. Lilian Calò and by the Librarian from the field of Information Services, Ms. Elisabeth Biruel.
Elisabeth Biruel was responsible for delivering the pre-congress workshop on Access and Use of Scientific Health Information on May 28, at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. The activity combined theory and practice and had 30 participants, among doctors, medical students and librarians. The following topics were covered: Concept and use of scientific evidence and main types of health research; the PICO(TS) method for structuring the research question; searching for terms in the thesaurus Health Science Descriptors (DeCS); main sources of health information, search resources from databases, and evaluation of search results (GRADE – Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation).
Dr. Lilian Calò presented the pre-congress course “Scientific Health Research: What, How and Where to Publish” on May 29th in the auditorium of the Instituto Nacional de Salud for approximately 40 participants. The course covered the following topics: foundations of scientific communication; attribution of authorship and ethics in scientific publication; impact indices on scientific communication; traditional metrics and altimetry; peer evaluation; preprints; open access, open data and the future of scientific communication; how to choose journals for publishing.
On May 30th, Dr. Calò participated as a speaker in the Symposium “From Research to Publication and Social Impact”, along with other four researchers. On the 31st, she participated in the Meeting of Scientific Editors, presenting the topic “Ethics in scientific publication”. Sueli Suga, BIREME Supervisor for Referential Information Sources, participated virtually in the Meeting, bringing the topic “LILACS: visibility and quality of scientific production in Latin America and the Caribbean”. At the end of the session, there was a discussion workshop about the situation of biomedical journals in Peru, as well as about the proposal for creating an Editors’ Network for inter-institutional collaboration, in which BIREME would be able to aid the editors through the LILACS network as well as through virtual training on scientific communication.
Dr. González presented two conferences: “Primary Health Care: our priority” and “Training for Researchers: what cannot go missing”. In addition, he was present at the National Meeting of Representatives from Academic and Scientific Student Organizations of Peru, along with student representatives of the Medical Schools of the country. The Meeting was held with the objective of implementing a Network. At the occasion, the Director of BIREME presented the topic “Youth and Agenda 2030”.
According to Dr. González, Director of BIREME/PAHO/WHO, events of this kind will always be supported by BIREME, since they offer an opportunity for working with those who train young doctors and generate university programs. Having focused on this occasion on Primary Health Care means being in touch with what PAHO/WHO currently promotes at Regional level, in order to achieve the Universal Health goals for the year 2030.
The agenda in Lima for Dr. González included a series of meetings aimed at: identifying collaboration projects with the PAHO/WHO South American Sub-regional team; evaluating advances in the implementation of the application e-BlueInfo for Primary Health Care; and evaluating with CONCYTEC the possibility that researchers might receive points for publishing in LILACS (Index of Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Information).
Finally, accepting an invitation of the Medical School of Universidad Norbert Weiner, Dr. González gave a conference for 80 students on the products and services of BIREME, as well as on the strategic actions developed by the Center in collaboration with youths.