WFN Education Sub-Committee

WFN Standards & Evaluations Committee

Chair: Prof. László Vécsei

e-mail: vecsei.laszlo@med.u-szeged.hu

Description

The task of the WFN Standards & Evaluations Committee is to evaluate applications of international or national neurological congresses and any other scientific meetings in neurosciences for WFN accreditation that apply according to its guidelines as noted on the application form which can be reached on the WFN website: https://www.wfneurology.org/meetings-endorsement.

The purpose of this WFN activity is to keep and improve the standards of the neurological scientific meetings that apply for WFN endorsement through accreditation according to a structured guideline. Information on the required ethical issues and limitations with the pharmaceutical and other industries are to be found in the application form. Once a completed application is received, applicants are notified of the decision within two weeks of their application.

If the application is approved and the meeting is endorsed, it qualifies to use the WFN logo, it is announced on the WFN website and WFN Newsletter and after the meeting, a brief summary will also be published on the website.

One other task of the Committee is to review and accredit any neurology related guidelines or booklet that seeks for WFN accreditation, which depending on its content it may be reviewed together with the Education Committee.

A brief history of the WFN Standards & Evaluations Committee

By Prof. Aksel Siva, Chair, WFN Standards & Evaluations Committee

July 2017

The WFN "Task Force on Evaluation and Accreditation" was a newly formed committee by Prof. Hachinski and his administration when they took the office in 2009. One of the purposes of this task force was to keep and improve the standards of the neurological scientific meetings that applied for WFN endorsement through accreditation according to a structured guideline.

The specific work that this task force was assigned was among the many tasks of the WFN Education Committee earlier. As the workload of the committee had increased in the recent years, it was decided to have a separate task force to undertake some of these works. The members of this task force for the first term [2009-2011] were Aksel Siva, MD (Turkey) (chair), Sarosh Katrak, MD (India) (co-chair and who currently is the chair of the WFN - WCN Teaching course committee) and Charles Warlow, MD (UK) who updated and extended the application form and also established the new guidelines to apply in order to be endorsed by the WFN.

The ethical issues and relationship with the pharmaceutical and other industries were reinforced, and baseline requirements had been restructured in order to keep and improve further the scientific and ethical quality of the WFN-endorsed and accredited congresses, symposia and other neurological scientific meetings. Later this structured guideline was designed as the "WFN application form for accreditation of scientific meetings" seeking WFN endorsement (current form in the attachment). This form can be found online on the WFN website of or can be requested directly from the WFN headquarters.

In the second term of the Task Force on Evaluation and Accreditation [2011-2013] / renamed as WFN Standards & Evaluations Committee, the same members were re-appointed, but Prof. Charles Warlow, MD (UK) due to his other obligations had to leave and was replaced by Prof. Werner Hacke, MD (Germany) who was also the vice-president of the WFN at that time. The committee during this term had approved a number of meetings and had to decline a few either because they were not compatible with the WFN Evaluation and Accreditation ethical guidelines or had applied much later than the application deadline. An extended collaboration with the Education Committee was developed during this term and some of the issues forwarded to our Task Force, due to mutual interest were shared with the co-chairs of that committee, Dr. Steve Sergay (chair) and Prof. Wolfgang Grisold (co-chair).

Finally, after the election of Prof. Raad Shakir as the new president of the WFN, who was the vice president in the previous term and was in close contact with the WFN Standards & Evaluations Committee and had attended its annual business meetings, decided that this committee should continue and may have further responsibilities.

The current committee (since 2013) consists of Aksel Siva, MD (Turkey) (chair), Natan Bornstein, MD (Israel), Beomseok Jeon, MD (Korea) and Riadh Gouider, MD (Tunusia), who is also a trustee of the WFN.

The Committee continues to evaluate the application of scientific meetings and also had evaluated some international guidelines ad informative scientific documents. The close relationship between our Committee and WFN Education Committee, who is chaired by Prof. Steven Lewis continues and on regular meetings with our president Prof. Raad Shakir, Vice President William Caroll, Secretary General Prof. Wolfgang Grisold and Trustees we get together to see how we may improve our committee's tasks further.

One future task of the Accreditation & Evaluation Committee is to establish an accreditation system for e-learning (online) programs. This task is planned to be brought to life together with the WFN Education Committee.

A wishful attempt was to establish an accreditation system that could be effective in WFN-member countries. Such a WFN credit system may be effective for neurologists who will attend international or national congresses and symposia that are accredited by WFN, as well as for neurologists who would participate in WFN educational activities nationally. However, since every member country has either their own credit system or no system at all, and that such a universal system is not easy to gain wide acceptance by governmental bodies, currently this task remains as a wish.