The Spine Times Amsterdam Issue 4

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AMSTERDAM /// ThursDAY, 31 May 2012 /// Spineweek2012.com /// ISSUE 4

Interview with Michael Ogon

Interviewing Haluk Berk, Secretary of the EuroSpine Society Please, tell us about your career in the EuroSpine Society!

EuroSpine Treasurer Michael Ogon from Vienna, Austria, is a proud member of EuroSpine since 2000. He expressed his gratitude to all participants of the Spineweek 2012 and emphasized the importance of a high quality community such as the EuroSpine Society.

Personally I always enjoy the debates, especially those discussing rather simple questions that often occur in the everyday life of spine surgeons. They often seem to be rather easy to handle, but there are always different perspectives and it is always interesting to hear other angles of approach.

What are the advantages of a membership? Personally, I think EuroSpine is the most important society for my professional life due to its international character – including not only the European countries, but also the USA and Asia. First of all there are personal advantages such as receiving the European Spine Journal and the information about education courses and the scientific congresses. There are also special benefits regarding the participation on courses and the annual congress. In times like these for me there is also a moral obligation to form a strong community in order to generate and represent a common sense of quality management and high-quality education throughout Europe. It takes a huge community to achieve this – the more the better.

What do you think are the trends in the field of spine? While for a long time there seemed to be a concentration on motion preservation, it seems to me that now the main focus shifted towards a balanced spine, which was important all the time but is now even more important.

What are the program highlights for you?

What is your personal opinion on the newly improved EuroSpine App? The App definitively is one of the best systems I have seen so far on congresses of such a big size. It provides the user with all the relevant information concerning the Spineweek and is very easy to use. You get all the facts on various lectures and even details on the members and lecturers. Furthermore I‘m very fond of the voting system, since this audio response system motivates the participants to take active part in the meetings.

EuroSpine is a merger of two societies – the European Spine Society and the European Spine Deformities Society (ESDS). I was a member and one of the last travelling fellows of the ESDS and became a member of the EuroSpine in 1996. During the meeting where the two societies decided to merge, I was glad to receive the Best Poster Award.

At first, I was just attending the meetings and was not keen on taking a role in the society, but that changed with my application to host the EuroSpine meeting in Istanbul. The congress was designated to be hosted in Istanbul in 2006. In the meantime the EuroSpine accepted me to take an active role in the society and I was elected as a Member at Large. After a period of two years, I was re-elected to the Executive Committee again in 2005/06 as the Congress Chair for the 2006 congress in Istanbul, which turned out to be a big success – as the participants told me.

Hence, I became a part of the Education Committee, where we developed a number of new courses. These well structured courses were running very successfully without the influence of the industry. As the demand for the courses was increasing and the existing courses were not enough to fit the society‘s needs, the Education Committee was strengthened in its position within the society. The teamwork in the committee was really great. Creating new courses is not done in a second – it takes a lot of time and effort and you have to learn from your own mistakes. Then, Phil Sell took over the Committee Chair and continued developing new courses and here we are today, at the era of education modules, education weeks and fellowship programs, also thanks to the great work done by Finn Christensen and Marco Brayda-Bruno, who implemented these. I then applied to the role of Secretary of the EuroSpine Society. I was elected three years ago and took over from Ferran Pellisé who had been a very good Secretary. It was very hard for me to accomplish the high standards that Ferran set. During my three years as the secretary, I had to press many feet and some voices started questioning whether Turkey is a part of Europe or not, instead of pushing for scientific progress and working for a better joint future. If you look at other societies, you see that even national societies like NASS become global players and open their doors fully to the world. To me this argument of closing doors, drawing thick borders and re-evaluating the existence of an already well-

working member from a specific country seems strange and is unacceptable. However, the General Assembly yesterday prooved that this argument is not true. What are your goals for the future? Closing our doors to the outside world is not the future. That is why we are working on our strategic plan for the next 10 years. One already decided field of action is the education program – with the help of the EuroSpine Foundation. With the feedback which we get from the participants, the industry and all the faculty members, we are improving the Education Weeks. The courses should be extended to master level and experience level. For the development of the Education Program we have the full support from the Executive Committee. The second area is research. Our Research Task Force (RTF) is under the chair of Margareta Nordin, whom I admire for her personality and academic achievements. She is doing so well that the RTF is becoming one of the strong motors of the society. Therefore the funding of research will be increased. Our third area of interest is Spine Tango, which is our digital registry. I think that in the future the patient registries will be mandatory in all European countries as it is already now in Switzerland. Having an already working registry will intensify the society’s position and our stakeholders’ perception. So we will get the chance to negotiate and sit together with the governments, the public health authorities in Brussels, the ... continued on page 4


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