Thomas G. Tape, MD, MACP
Immediate Past Chair, Board of Regents
33rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Royal College of Physicians of Thailand (RCPT)
Bridging the Gaps Between Research, Policy and Practice
May 1-3, 2017
Bangkok, Thailand
During the annual scientific meeting I met with the leadership of the Royal College of Physicians of Thailand (RCPT), including their President Dr. Amorn Leelarasamee and the meeting chair, Dr. Thanyachai Sura. Both were extremely welcoming and grateful that ACP had sent an ambassador to their meeting. Dr. Leelarasamee recognized me at Convocation and presented me with an Honorary Fellowship. He also talked about me representing ACP at the Presidential Dinner.
I presented two talks – the first was in the form of a round table discussion of “revalidation,” which is somewhat analogous to the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) process in the United States. This was attended by about 15 leaders who were all involved in the Thai revalidation project. They presented their system and I presented the twists and turns of the MOC process up to the current discussions around the alternative society pathway. We then had about a 30 minute discussion that I felt was very helpful to them.
My second talk was on the assigned topic of the meeting theme: Bridging the Gap from Research to Policy and Practice. I took a somewhat unusual approach that incorporated some of the work I have done with judgment psychologists. A really good discussion followed my talk.
I personally found the meeting to be fascinating. It was very well run and the talks I attended seemed to be quite well done. Although most of the sessions were in Thai, nearly all the PowerPoint slides were in English so it was quite easy to read the slides and get the gist of the presentations. The posters were prominently displayed in the halls that connected the various meeting rooms and they were entirely in English. The majority of the posters were actually research rather than clinical vignettes and some of the work was quite impressive. All attendees received voting cards and were asked to vote for their favorite poster each session. On the last day, the top five posters were placed in a hall of fame area. They also had a very lively version of Doctors Dilemma which they simply call “The Medicine Tournament” held at the end of the day.
For photos from this meeting, visit the Ambassadors in Action section of ACP Online.