Baltic and North Sea Forum on Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine 2.0 -Challenges and Opportunities in New Times
The Baltic and North Sea Forum on Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (BNF-PRM) was established in 2008 with the main goals to communicate between colleagues in the region in scientific and educational matters as well as system development i.e. rehabilitation teamwork and resulting in a specific structure of BNF-PRM Conferences with scientific and educational themes and conceptual discussions of aspects of service delivery.
BNF-PRM have had seven conferences every two years with a pendulum principle i.e. every other conference in one of the Baltic states and every other in the western part of Northern Europe. The first was held in Stockholm 2010 and the 7th conference was held in Tartu Estonia 2022. Between them were organized conferences in Vilnius, Hannover, Riga, Maastricht, Oslo. These activities have had a special concept with a focus on rehabilitation across borders.
However, during the pandemic BNF-PRM have experienced “fatigue”, mainly due to decreased personal contact resulting in a loss of maintenance of congress principles, no updated website. Finally, travel restrictions during the pandemic restricted communication and networking activities.
When realizing that BNF-PRM had lost its profile and number of activities we had a meeting in Stockholm, Sweden in November 2022 to discuss the future for BNF-PRM. The first question was if BNF-PRM has a reason to exist at all. The answer was yes. We found that the value of the initially defined aims and principles for BNF-PRM still exist and that there are even more challenges for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine in the region due to the fact that there is a new political landscape and political climate and a need of rehabilitation systems and services both on a quantitative and qualitative level due to the war in Europe and an increasing number of people with post-infectious problems after Covid-19 infection.
BNF-PRM 2.0 will maintain the core goals i.e. scientific communication, exchange and collaboration (partnership), teaching and workforce development, exchange on rehabilitation system and service organization and to structure conferences according to the BNF principles. BNF-PRM 2.0 will also have new goal settings such as to enlarge the regional focus to eastern European countries e.g. Ukraine, and to shift focus more to the Baltic region (and/or other post-soviet countries). Other main new goals and organizational developments are to build collaboration in general and/or at center level between countries, exchange programs for team members and to strengthen research in the rehabilitation field. Other goals are to support transition processes of services if demanded by sharing expertise and experience and to motivate and involve young doctors and other rehabilitation professionals in different rehabilitation activities and as well as to tie the different national PRM societies closer together via a board of national societies within BNF-PRM.
Alvydas Juocevicius, president BNF-PRM
Christoph Gutenbrunner, president Advisory Committee BNF-PRM
Kristian Borg, past-president BNF-PRM
