Dear colleagues,
It is a great honour and a pleasure for me to introduce you to ENTOG, the European Network of Trainees in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Whereas the
European Board and College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
(
EBCOG) represents the European countries for obstetrics and gynaecology on the consultant level, we represent the trainees in our specialty within Europe. The network is run by an Executive of 5 trainees and young specialists. Like EBCOG,
we are an organization with countries as members. ENTOG has been continuously growing and at present we have representatives in 29 different countries, from within and outside the European Union. Getting new members implies that trainees have had to organize themselves first on a national level, as only national networks can be represented at the ENTOG Council. Our network actively promotes countries currently lacking a trainee organization to start their own network, especially if this is already true at the consultant level, regarding EBCOG.
European trainees have been meeting up since 1992, but only founded themselves as an organization in its own right in 1997. We received a lot of support from EBCOG from the very start into the present days, and the bonds between both organizations have become more and more solid over the years. Organizing ourselves was an important step in the developing cooperation of trainees within our specialty.
We strive for harmonization of training programs and improved training standards in Europe. We try and do this by facilitating exchange and interaction. One way we do this is by organizing an annual exchange program and meeting together with one of our members as local organizing committee.
We work in close collaboration with EBCOG and are represented in their most important standing committees and visitation for basic training. In this way we are able to represent trainees’ interests and to raise awareness for concerns related to training on a European level. This collaboration also lead us into finally integrating our annual meeting in the EBCOG European Congress twice so far, in Portugal 2008 and Belgium 2010.
To reach trainees all over Europe, alongside the annual ENTOG meetings, the internet is one of our most important tools. Please visit our website at
www.entog.org
for more information about our objectives and our past and upcoming activities. For any enquiries, please contact us on
executive@entog.org
.
We also communicate with our newsletter. It averages four issues per year and gives an update about our activities and any topics we are currently working on. You can receive this newsletter for free after registration on our website.
Our next exchange program and meeting will be in the United Kingdom in May, 2010.
It would be great to see you there!!
Yours sincerely, on behalf of the ENTOG executive,
Nuno Nogueira Martins
ENTOG President