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Norway By Eirik Bø Larsen
Structure The Norwegian Medical Association (NMA) has approximately 25.000 members including students, foreign- and retired doctors. About 97 per cent of all Norwegian doctors are members of the NMA. Since 1993 there have been seven subgroups within the umbrella organisation the NMA. These subgroups are occupational branches that share occupational interests. The Association of General practitioners, previously called Aplf, was renamed AF as part of a change of structure within the NMA in 2006. AF is the third largest occupational branch with 4700 members including trainees working in the field of general practise and retired GPs. Excluding trainees, 4340 general practitioners are working in the field of general practise today. The Central Board of the NMA consists of nine members including the president and the vice president, currently three general practitioners are represented in this board. The Central board is responsibly to the General Assembly consisting of approximately 120 members representing different occupational branches as well as different geographical regions throughout the country. General practitioners have a reasonable percentage of representatives in different parts of the NMA. Both occupational and educational interests of the general practitioners are brought through the general practitioners bodies to the Central Board of the NMA. The structure of the NMA is meant to keep the different subgroups united, and all subgroups have their own secretariat integrated within the secretariat of the NMA
Education The NMA not only has its interests in union tasks such as income and working conditions, but also has its own branch of the secretariat serving postgraduate education and speciality branches in all fields of medicine as well as a research institute. The NMA has also contributed to give medical faculties at the universities resources to build up new educational centres like institutes and centres for general practise, community health and occupational medicine. A reimbursement tariff for general practise and other private specialists is negotiated every year with the Government/National Insurance Company. A part o f the total reimbursement amount is allocated to educational and quality improvement funds. These funds enable the NMA to organise postgraduate courses and other education independent of the pharmaceutical industry. The NMA organises 63 different speciality branches of which 44 correspond to a recognised medical speciality, including general practise/family medicine. The Ministry of Health has authorised the NMA to deal with, and decide on applications for the approval of specialists in medicine.
The Association of General Practitioners The Association of General Practitioners was founded in 1938 and was called Aplf until the name was changed to AF as a consequence of an internal change of structure within the NMA in 2006. AF's secretariat has been integrated within the NMA's secretariat for more than 30 years. The Central Board of the AF has seven members, each elected for two years by the annual general assembly. In every county AF has its chosen county representative who represents AF on the board of the county divisions of the NMA. The central representatives of AF are present in the different committees within the NMA and herein fulfil part of AF's trade union tasks. In addition to its own activities, AF can make use of the resources within the main secretariat of the NMA for different purposes and tasks towards the Government, politicians or other trade unions. The main tasks for AF are union tasks such as general practitioners remuneration, working conditions and similar. Before the structural reorganisation of the NMA, Aplf was heavily engaged in improving the quality of general practise through education etc. These tasks have now been taken over by another organisation called NFA which corresponds to a “college of general practitioners”. Every member of the AF has also a compulsory membership in the NFA. The main task for this organisation is to continually work to improve the standard and quality of the general practitioners, their assistants and their practises, including organising postgraduate education for both general practitioners and their assistants. The NFA has its own board of seven members and work in close cooperation with the AF with mutual board meetings, and they send representatives to each others board meetings. Thus the educational and professional development discussed and decided for, if possible, can be integrated with the political goals of the organisation and vice versa. NFA suggests the members for the Speciality Committee for General Practise/Family Medicine. After several years of hard work by the Association of General Practitioners and the NMA, the Government recognised the speciality in general practise/family medicine in 1985. This speciality has helped to raise both quality of care provided by the Norwegian general practitioners, their status and income. Today 56 per cent of the general practitioners are specialists in general practise/family medicine. |
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