Minutes of the First Joint H.A.P.A & HPA Business Meeting
MONDAY MAY 17TH 2004
18TH PAN-HELLENIC CONGRESS OF PSYCHIATRY
These minutes were approved by the HAPA Executive committe.
Final ratification of minutes at the HAPA 2005 Meeting.
On Monday May 17th after a very successful Round Table DISCUSSION on The Hellenic Psychiatric Association and the Hellenic American Psychiatric Association A WIN-WIN PARTNERSHIP FOR THE FUTUREÓ members of the HPA & HAPA held a business meeting to discuss improving communications and expanding possibilities for collaboration.
MEMBERS PRESENT:
From HPA: Drs Athanasios Vidalis, Iannis Zervas, Venos Mavreas, Yannis Papakostas, George Papadimitriou, Panagiotis Grigoriou, Stelios Stylianidis.
From HAPA: Drs Constantinos Lyketsos, Georgios Petrides, Maria Lymberis, Emmanuel Cassimatis
Dr Lyketsos chaired the meeting. There was enthusiastic agreement that HAPA is serving a real need in offering a formal connection for Greek and American psychiatrists. This was no formal agenda for this meeting. Dr Lymberis gave a brief history of the founding of HAPA and Dr Lyketsos encouraged the participants to bring forth their concerns. There emerged an, open, cordial and engaging discussion of the following issues: What can HAPA offer to HPA? What the needs/interests of Greek psychiatrists are?, How HPA can help HAPA? . This was the first time that the HAPA leadership had the opportunity to hear directly form our colleagues in Greece. A number of ideas and suggestions immerged
1) HAPA & HPA could work on Education
a. Visiting Professorships: maybe every October in Athens under the sponsorship of HAPA and the University of Athens (UA). This would center around an evening keynote lecture, maybe in one of the U of A auditoria, on a topic of broad interest to psychiatry, but would also be of interest to physicians in all specialties. The visiting Professor might also spend some time with residents/faculty at Aiginiton hospital on days surrounding the keynote activity. Venos Mavreas will be exploring topics of interest among Greek psychiatrists with a series of focus groups in Greece. He would be the contact person communicating with HAPA on the results/ideas that develop from these efforts.
b. Education in the USA for Greek psychiatrists, residents, medical students going into psychiatry. Venos Mavreas will explore interest re what types of education would be of value for different groups of docs, e.g., health system docs, academics, fellows, etc. The idea would be to present a proposal in the LT to the ministry to support this in collaboration with HAPA.
c. Research support/mentorship involving:
Review of papers before publication. HAPA will need to have a roster of HAPA members who would be qualified and willing to do this, (maybe review no more than 1-2 papers a year in their area of expertise) They would comment on the paper as a reviewer and suggest Journal direction.
Help with the translation of scales and clinical measures into Greek.
Develop a seminar on clinical research methodology in psychiatry. Perhaps a 3-4 day series with HAPA members as speakers in Greece with HPA sponsorship at a Greek university and possibly funded by outside sources(?) .
2) Consultation & Referrals
There is a need for info re referrals both ways .and a mechanism should be developed.
3) Improve Communications between HPA & HAPA
Write and provide a regular HAPA News Column for Greek psychiatric publications like the Journal of Dr Vidalis and Psychiatriki.
Greek HAPA members could write & provide a HAPA News page for posting on message boards of all Greek hospitals with psychiatric residents.
Greek HAPA members could help promote the HAPA Annual meeting by finding out who are the Greeks that are coming to the APA meeting and send a personal invitation to come to HAPA meeting. Maybe work to fund raise from some pharmaceutical companies that support Greek psychiatrists travel to the APA meeting and see if they will also support the HAPA meeting.
Dr Lyketsos will be coming to Greece with Dr Alexopoulos in the fall 2004 for a conference. Both would be available to implement the idea of a HAPA-HPA Visiting Professorship, lecture at the University and meet with residents.
Respectfully Submitted
Maria T Lymberis, MD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA
HAPA Founder & Past President
Constantinos Lyketsos, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Co-Director, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry
HAPA President”
