National Keynote Speaker
Gergana Foreva, MD, PhD
General Practitioner
Empowering the next generation of family physicians in an everchanging healthcare landscape in Bulgaria. A take on the topic.
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
We are at the end of the third decade of the reform of the healthcare system in our country, which introduced general medical practice, performed by a general medicine specialist. Despite the difficulties in transforming the healthcare system, general practitioners found their place. And if in the first decades the focus was entirely on changes and transition, structuring and the relationship with the National health insurance fund, gradually space opened up for new priorities.
In our country, the academic representation of the specialty took place in conjunction with the change in the health sector. This allowed scientific research to be done at the same time, reflecting the development of the specialty and its practical dimensions. When reviewing the dissertations and publications on general medicine in the Bulgarian scientific medical periodicals, the topics cover a wide spectrum - health service, clinical issues, education, etc. Since the establishment of the departments, the members have been regular participants in the EGPRN meetings. A major step was the accreditation of training practices in which general medicine residents work on an employment contract. With the newly adopted program, research training became part of the residents' curriculum.
Every generation has its own view of the world. And the landscape of the healthcare system has changed radically in recent decades. We work within the framework of a developing national health information system. It includes patients’ data concerning their health status. On the other hand, artificial intelligence is both at our and at the patients’ disposal if a question arises. Even more so in the hands of a generation native to technology. New realities facilitate and complicate daily work. Doctor-patient communication has always been an essential defining feature of the specialty, and the advent of new technologies is significantly changing its perspective. Generational diversity has its advantages, because different perspectives can be an important strength in defining our new health care system.