January 2nd-5th 2014
Dear medical students around the world. It has been 3 incredible, tiring but extremely motivating days for all of us in Panama. We concluded the Pre-Americas Regional meeting where medical students from the region gathered to join in capacity building, to get new ideas, exchange their thoughts and to make new friends. 5 parallel workshops were held for all participants:
– Essential Skills in Medical Education for Students, with the aim to understand the basics of learning, teaching, curriculum development, assessment and finally: how to advocate for improvements in your education at a local or national level
– Training New Trainers, where members from IFMSA rise up to the challenge to learn how to train their fellow members and form creative workshops
– Training Old Trainers, where IFMSA trainers come together to refresh their skills and learn how they can create a workshop to train future trainers of IFMSA
– Global health Leadership, where students passionate about public health got the opportunity to learn about health systems and policies
– IPAS, a workshop on Maternal Health and Access to Safe Abortion. It opened the discussion on this controversial but important topic that we as medical students will be faced with in the future
But for 16 of the attendants there was another session: The Americas Region has for the first time since 2005 hosted the Team of Officials Meeting. The Team of Officials (TO) together with two observers got together for discussions on the workings of the Federation at the international level and to plan ahead for what we hope will be an amaxing 2014. We even had several officials joining the discussions from a distance using live streaming.
Besides being happy to see each other again and revisiting the teamwork that we have and our various communication channels and administrative duties, the TO has worked on several topics in the past few days, such as the preperations for the upcoming March Meeting in Tunisia, follow up on our individual priorities and the Annual Work Plan, and follow up from our last TOM in Greece. We saw that most of the goals that we have set are well on their way of being accomplished, whether it concerns the IFMSA website and social media, the work within the Standing Committees or support to NMOs. Another highyl relevant topic was of course the Santiago resolution, where we as IFMSA during the August Meeting 2013 committed to reforming our federation in the best way possible. We received updates from the Taskforce that has been working since then, and discussed how we as a officials can contribute to their work.
The follow up on action points from this TOM2 has already started; when finding time between the sessions we’re facilitating and trainings that we are giving here at the Regional Meeting, we try to meet up to work on creating the guidelines we wanted to create for Sub Regional Trainings, or developing the NMO support programmes we would like to soon see come out.
Warmest greetings from the entire Team of Officials.
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