Gimbernat
Surgical Association
Celebrating our 10th Anniversary
October 7, 8, 13th
The Gimbernat Surgical Association has celebrated its 10th anniversary in October 2021. Our surgical society was created 10 years ago by a group of students interested in surgery and our Professor of Surgery Manuel Pera.
At that moment, the Gimbernat was the only Surgical Society in Spain, and it still is nowadays. Because of this fact, one of the objectives of this event has also been to spread the word of the great advantages that provide having a surgical society in our Medicine Faculty.
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In the first day, a big ceremony with distinguished guests from Catalan Surgery and Medicine were invited to open the conferences: Manuel Pera, Miguel Pera, Salvador Navarro, and Joaquim Gea. After their words, the current President of the Gimbernat Surgical Society, Adrián López, and the former President of years 2019-2020, Núria Casanova, prepared a presentation about the history of our association.
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Some of the numbers that the Gimbernat has accomplished over the last years are the following: +400 members, +50 conferences, 2 SCALPEL Surgical Symposiums and 24 Erasmus and Clerkships programs.
After this session, Dr Raquel Sánchez, Head of General and Digestive Surgery in Hospital Álvaro Cunqueiro (Vigo, Spain), was invited to give a talk about "Teaching in times of crisis: the experience of the Spanish Surgeons Association Virtual Classroom". In this presentation, she outlined the importance of finding alternative ways to keep learning in surgical training, specially in moments where it is difficult: such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The second day of the 10th Anniversary hosted two sessions about other current topics which are also part of our society: Women in Surgery and Humanism in Surgery.
The first session counted with the participation of three surgeons in different professional stages: Marta Pascual, Gemma Pidemunt, Blanca Montcusí. The conversation was moderated by our Vicepresident, Lucía Pastor. The talk included topics such as balance between personal and professional life, maternity, or gender differences in surgical specialties.
The last session of the day was titled: "Humanism in Surgery: now more needed than ever". On this session, Dr Manuel Pera and one of our Board Team members, Pelayo Aguilera, discussed the importance of humanity in medical practice and specially in the surgical field. They both shared their experiences and opinions moderated by Prof Jonathan McFarland, President of The Doctor as a Humanist international project and online school.
The 10th Anniversary finished with an online session connecting together Barcelona, Edinburgh and London.
We had the privilege to have Aya Riad and Alice Smith, who are respectively the Presidents of the Edinburgh Students Surgical Society, and the Kings College of London Students Surgical Society. The session was moderated by Neil Mortensen, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England; Manuel Pera, Professor of Surgery in the Autonomous University of Barcelona; and Sheraz Markar, Senior Oesophago-gastric Fellow in Oxford.
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Together, they discussed the importance of Surgical Societies when fostering interest in surgical specialties at university, specially now with the decay in surgical interest by younger generations. One key message of the talk has been that institutional support is fundamental in order to promote these associations, as it has been seen in the United Kingdom.
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Finally, two sessions of our popular Suturing Workshop were organised to train our members on how to tie basic suturing knots and how to suture a wound in artificial skills.
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Special thanks to the General Surgery Residents and Consultants who participated as instructors, as well as the rest of the Gimbernat Board Team for organising the 10th Anniversary event.
