The Importance of Using Social Media in Rural Medicine workshop will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Wednesday 26th June 2013, at 10.30am (room Club E). Organised by the Vasco da Gama Movement and EURIPA, moderated by R. Gomez Bravo, C. Lygidakis, S. Begg, E. McPhee, M. Sattler, R. Zoitanu, S. Rigon, N. Harris, S. Cherry, S. Maroto. Objective: To analyse the importance, impact and use of Social Media among rural professionals worldwide. Methods: The confluence of social media (SM) and medicine has many benefits, but isolated and rural Family Physicians are still not taking advantage of the opportunity to create this virtual network and to reach their patients and colleagues on the online community that has formed around SM websites to take medical interests forward.

The Training for Family Physicians: Time to Go Global? collaborative workshop will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Wednesday 26th June 2013, at 3.30pm (room North Hall). Organised by the Vasco da Gama Movement and EURACT, moderated by Jessica Watson, Alice Shiner, Luisa Pettigrew, Greg Irving, Lynda Redwood-Campbell, Jessica Evert, Yvonne Leeuwen Robert Burman, Roar Maagaard. Objective: In the increasingly interdependent world of the 21st century, global health is on our doorsteps and in our consulting rooms. People travel and diseases move beyond national borders more rapidly than ever. Family doctors increasingly serve multicultural societies with diverse needs. Physicians are powerful advocates for health, requiring engagement with issues of globalisation, health inequalities, climate change and political instability. There is an increasing recognition of the importance of global health education at an undergraduate level, however less work has been done at a postgraduate level, in particular with a focus on primary care.

The Gender Violence: A New Approach workshop will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Thursday 27th June 2013, at 3.30pm (room Club A). Organised by the Vasco da Gama Movement, EURIPA and the Wonca Working Party on Women and Family Medicine, moderated by R. Gomez Bravo, T. Pekez-Pavlisko, J. Frances Namatovu, L. Laranjo, A.T. Riel-Espina, E. Farrell, B. Tarazona Chocano, A. Nunes Barata, S. Rigon, D. Ramić Severinac. Objective: Gender violence (GV) is a serious problem in our society and each country has different policies and strategies to address it. Methods: The idea of this workshop is not only to share the different strategies to prevent, recognize and treat GV and domestic violence (DV) in your practice, but also to analyse the current education provided about this subject during University, GP training and after the specialisation.

The workshop Social Media and mHealth Now! Applications in Primary Care will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Saturday 29th June 2013, at 10.30am (Small Theatre). Moderated by Raluca Zoitanu, Soleman Begg, Charilaos (Harris) Lygidakis, Martin Sattler, Raquel Gomez Bravo, Tiago Villanueva and Sara Rigon. Social media is becoming part of everyday life for most individuals and companies. General practitioners/family doctors and their patients follow this trend as well, although at different pace in various countries around the world. For the past two years Vasco da Gama Movement, the Wonca Europe network for young and future GPs, showed in its workshops how Social Media can be used by GPs to strengthen organizations, their practice or how to use it as a tool to be easily and conveniently updated with medical and non medical information. Social Media refers to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, Youtube and many more tools which allow people to interact over the Internet - create, exchange, comment and share. In this workshop we will focus more on how Social Media can be used in Primary Care for patient care. How can patients be empowered by using Social Media ? What are the limits for both patients and professionals in using Social Media? Do we need a code of conduct?

The Writing for publication: a joint VdGM/EGPRN/EJGP workshop will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Thursday 27th June 2013, at 10.30am (room Club B). Organised by the Vasco da Gama Movement, the European General Practice Research Network and the European Journal of General Practice, moderated by Jelle Stoffers, Tobias Freund, Charilaos (Harris) Lygidakis, Greg Irving. Introduction: Peer reviewed medical journals are important media for the publication of articles relevant to Primary Health Care and General Practice, such as research papers, reviews of literature, clinical lessons, and opinion papers. They are the means to disseminate original research results and educational information, discuss available evidence and share experiences. Aim: This workshop aims to give participants knowledge about successfully preparing a manuscript for medical journals.

The workshop Shifting perspectives in healthcare: becoming partners with patients will be held during the WONCA World 2013 Conference Prague on Thursday 27th June 2013, at 2pm (room Club E). Organised by the Vasco da Gama Movement and WONCA Europe, moderated by Carl Steylaerts, Charilaos (Harris) Lygidakis, Raquel Gomez-Bravo and Greg Irving. Background: The Internet-savvy users, the so called e-patients, seek online health information, connect and collaborate with others and take advantage of this medium not only for decision making and management of their own condition, but also for education and advocacy purposes. The connectivity and the wide availability of a large amount of data, thanks to worldwide health databases, mobile devices and personal health records, enable the patients to play an active role in healthcare at an individual and community level, as shown by the connected communities of care and the movement of participatory medicine. Relationships between clinicians and patients are bound to be transformed fundamentally. In this context, it is crucial now, more than ever, that Family Doctors become partners with patients and lead the way into a new paradigm of Medicine.

The VdGM is happy to announce the winners of this year Carosino and Hippokrates Exchange Prizes, which award respectively the best exchange in a rural and any setting which took place in 2011 or 2012.