Author
ABSTRACT: It is universally accepted that medical education continues after leaving medical school and most would agree that the skills then acquired do include aspects not always contemplated during the school years. We present here the involvement of the Esteve Foundation on three different educational topics relevant to many graduates: a) Acquiring skills to serve in ethical committees (5 workshops), b) Improving the ability to write scientific papers (2 workshops), and c) Refining the skills to act as referees of scientific papers (2 workshops). The details presented here refer to 9 two-day workshops: 243 health professionals attended (51% women/49% men), and 9 professional acted as speakers/leaders (two for each workshop). A mixture of formal lectures, exercises, discussion-groups, role-play, and case-method were used. The attendees’ opinion was collected at the end of each workshop by means of an anonymous questionnaire (from 0 “bad” to 5 “very good”). The general aspects of the gathering (mean±SD:4.5±0.6, n=106 at the time of writing this abstract), and both theoretical (4.4±0.7) and practical (4.3±0.7) approaches were highly accepted. Good teacher skills (4.5±0.6) and the organisation (4.7±0.5) were also appreciated. All workshops generated publications (10 papers and 2 brochures). We submit that non-profit independent bodies such as the Esteve Foundation can contribute to continuing medical education focusing on topics that rarely find a natural sponsor, such as a particular scientific society. In our experience, a mixture of teaching methods is usually well accepted and the format so far adopted seems also to help in spreading the interest for the topics covered among other health professionals.