Abstract submissions for paper presentations and posters for the 43rd World Hospital Congress of the International Hospital Federation will be closing on 15 February. Hospitals and health service providers interested in showcasing their innovations, best practices and outstanding programs to the international community are encouraged to submit their abstracts now.

The World Hospital Congress is a unique global forum that brings together leaders of national and international hospital and healthcare organizations to share knowledge, expertise, experiences and best practices in leadership in hospital and healthcare management and delivery of services.

The 2019 World Hospital Congress, hosted by the Ministry of Health of the Sultanate of Oman, has the over-arching theme “People at the heart of health services in peace and crisis”.

Abstracts have to be submitted online at https://congress.ihf-fih.org/ihf_abstracts by 15 February (11:59pm UTC -11). Abstracts for the following sub-themes can be put forward:

Resilient health services:

• Best practices for preparedness and responses to disasters, outbreaks and cyberattacks
• Mitigating consequences of conflicts and terror attacks to continue serving all especially vulnerable groups
• Operating under severe resource constraints
• Leading practices reflecting systematic approaches to learning from crises and trauma
• Violence in the workplace

Health investment for prosperity

• Exploring governance practices driving better efficiency and relevance
• What management and leadership can do for increased efficiency and outcomes
• Inter-professional leadership for cost effectiveness and quality improvement
• What are the impacts of hospitals in the local and national economy
• Future of hospitals in an economically constrained world

Innovation for health impact

•  Removing barriers to innovation with change management
• Hospital Technology Assessment to speed up innovation adoption
• Embedding collaboration with industries for health innovation
• Procurement to accelerate and develop innovation
• Enhancing digital health services in the virtual space

More information including the submission process, general criteria and terms and conditions for presenters are available at https://congress.ihf-fih.org/ihf_abstracts

For any questions, contact congress@ihf-fih.org or visit www.worldhospitalcongress.org.

Playing an adventure video game featuring a fictitious, young emergency physician treating severe trauma patients was better than text-based learning at priming real doctors to quickly recognize the patients who needed higher levels of care, according to a new trial led by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
The results held even though doctors assigned to the game enjoyed it less than those assigned to traditional, text-based education. This indicates that if game enjoyment can be improved, the already favourable results might be enhanced.
“Physicians must make decisions quickly and with incomplete information. Each year, 30,000 preventable deaths occur after injury, in part because patients with severe injuries who initially present to non-trauma centres are not promptly transferred to a hospital that can provide appropriate care,” said lead author Deepika Mohan, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor in Pitt’s departments of Critical Care Medicine and Surgery. “An hour of playing the video game recalibrated physicians’ brains to such a degree that, six months later, they were still out-performing their peers in recognizing severe trauma.”
Mohan created the game Night Shift with Schell Games, a Pittsburgh-based educational and entertainment game development company. The game is designed to tap into the part of the brain that uses pattern recognition and previous experience to make snap decisions using subconscious mental shortcuts – a process called heuristics.
Physicians in non-trauma centres typically see only about one severe trauma per 1,000 patients. As a result, their heuristic abilities can become skewed toward obvious injuries such as gunshot wounds, and miss equally severe traumas such as internal injuries from falls. On average, 70 percent of severely injured patients who present to non-trauma centres are under-triaged and not transferred to trauma centres as recommended by clinical practice.
Both the game and the text-based learning are intended to help physicians improve their decision making regarding severe traumas. The game, however, sought to do this through narrative engagement, or the use of stories to promote behaviour change, which has shown promise in recalibrating heuristics.
Mohan’s team recruited 368 emergency medicine physicians from across the country who did not work at hospitals with trauma specialization. Half were assigned to play the game and half were asked to spend at least an hour reading the educational materials.
Participants then responded to questionnaires and completed a simulation that tested how often they “under-triaged,” or failed to send severe trauma patients to hospitals with the resources necessary to handle them. Physicians who played the game under-triaged 53 percent of the time, compared with 64 percent for those who read the educational materials.
Six months later, Mohan reassessed the physicians and found that the effect of the game persisted, with those who played the game under-triaging 57 percent of the time, compared to 74 percent for those who had read the educational materials.

UPMChttps://tinyurl.com/y9rlhcu3

The IHF World Hospital Congress is a unique global forum that brings together leaders of hospitals, health services, and healthcare organizations to discuss key drivers of national and international policy, management, financial trends and solutions. The 44th edition of the World Hospital Congress will take place on 2 to 5 November, 2020 at the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya in Barcelona. Professionals from the health sector interested in sharing their work to the international healthcare community are now invited to submit their abstracts.
The International Hospital Federation and La Unió Catalana d’Hospitals, organizers of the congress, invite leaders and professionals from hospitals, health services, and healthcare organizations to submit abstracts for an opportunity to showcase their best practices, innovations, projects, programs and researches to over a thousand peers from around the world.
The congress will tackle the overarching theme “People on board, transforming healthcare”.
“The demands of the society and industry have forced healthcare to transform in ways we wouldn’t have imagined before. And now that transformations are very well in motion, there is so much for us to understand and implement,” said Prof. Antoni Trilla, Chair of the Scientific Committee of the World Hospital Congress.
Those interested to present their work through an oral presentation or as a poster can submit abstracts online under the following sub-themes:
DIGITAL AND TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN TRANSFORMATIONS
· Artificial Intelligence for smart health and care
· Big accurate data: how it helps us
· How is digital health transforming the way health systems are run and healthcare is delivered
· Glocalization: new actors, new rules, global healthcare invaders in the local healthcare set
TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED CONCEPT OF HEALTH AND CARE SERVICES MODEL: VALUE DRIVEN TRANSFORMATIONS
· Enabling the flexibility of organizations to adapt quickly to changes, addressing accelerated innovation adoption
· Key results that really matter: patients outcomes as the driver for better healthcare
· Health and care sustainability supported by applied research and innovation adoption
· Global Healthcare, global mobility, global access: towards a liquid borderless healthcare system
PEOPLE AT THE CENTER OF HEALTHCARE SYSTEM TRANSFORMATIONS
· How to put citizens at the center of health and care
· Humanistic centered care
· Professionals leading transformations: the strength of professionals to promote transformation
· From health management to ethical leadership
Deadline of submission is on 31 January 2020. For more details and to submit your abstracts, go to https://worldhospitalcongress.org/2020-call-for-papers-and-posters. https://www.ihf-fih.org/ https://www.uch.cat/ Email: Mylene.dayola@ihf-fih.org

The European Society of Radiology (ESR) has renewed its initiatives to harmonize medical training for radiologists across Europe. Following advocacy on the part of the radiology community, in close coordination with the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS), after the modernization of the Professional Qualifications Directive in 2013, the current political climate offers new opportunities for adapting the legal framework regulating the free movement of doctors and recognition of professional qualifications.
 
Considering the ongoing evaluation of the Professional Qualifications Directive, the ESR brings again to the attention of the European Commission its twofold request to change Annex V, Section 5.1.3. in order to safeguard the highest standards of medical training and patient care throughout Europe.

Once again, the ESR has joined forces with the UEMS, the authority on medical education in Europe, demonstrating its continuous commitment to collaborating with partner organizations on the harmonization of medical education.
 
In an official letter submitted to the European Commission, the ESR strongly urges the European Commission to adopt a delegated act to increase the minimum years of training for radiologists from four to five years, in full compliance with the European Training Curriculum for Radiology that was developed to further harmonize radiology education throughout Europe.

Growing training needs and the introduction of digital solutions in medical imaging require equally high standards of training that can only be met by implementing a full-fledged five-year radiology training.
 
In addition, the ESR calls on the Member States and the European Commission to change the name of the discipline from “Diagnostic Radiology” to “Radiology”, reflecting the profession’s current practice comprising both diagnostic and interventional procedures.

As Member States hold the competence to unilaterally enter the name of a profession into Annex V, individual Member States are strongly encouraged to unilaterally enter “Radiology” as the name of the discipline as a first step towards harmonization. Nevertheless, the ESR believes that an EU-wide solution is needed and therefore urges the Member States and the European Commission to enter into dialogue in the interest of the free movement of radiologists in Europe.
 
The ESR supports a multi-layered approach, simultaneously launching initiatives at national and EU levels, to strengthen the voice of radiology in the debate. Therefore, the ESR counts on the national radiological societies to be the messenger of the unified radiology position towards national Ministries of Health and health authorities.

Only a coordinated approach involving the ESR and its institutional members can lead to the highest standards and a true harmonization of radiology training and enhance the mobility of the radiology profession in Europe.

https://tinyurl.com/y2q4m5ht