by Antonella Macerollo
Many European Neurologists are aware of Neuropenews, the blog/newsletter of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN). Neuropenews is a platform free to all EAN members. Prof Elena Moro (Division of Neurology, Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Grenoble, Grenoble, France) is the current Editor from 2015. The Editorial Board of Neuropenews involves other neurologists, experts in different fields of neurology and coming from different European countries (Austria, UK, Spain, Belgium).
The main objective of Neuropenews is to effectively communicate news in the neurology fields through several instruments organized in different domains. For instance, the “scientific corner” gives updates about the recent studies and discoveries in Neurology. The EAN blog strongly supports the corporate identity of European neurologists with different activities and promote education. Indeed, the “education corner” includes several aspects helpful for residents and junior neurologists, such as guidelines, links with interactive case of the month of Ebrain, news from the residents and research fellows section of EAN, articles about different events as courses, conferences, and workshops attended by trainees in Neurology.
The Neuropenews editorial team is going to make interesting innovations in 2016, starting with changing the Neuropenews’ name with “EAN pages”. To this regards, to further improve this EAN tool, in 2015 we circulated a survey among neurologists across Europe. The main aim of this survey was to obtain suggestion for further improvement or useful changes of Neuropenews.
We report here the most relevant results of the survey:
The age of the responders was around 30-40 years old (52.38%), and women participated more than men (60.47%). The most represented country among the responders was Spain. However, we had an important participation also from Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Serbia and Ukraine. About 81% of answers came from Adult Neurologists, as expected among EAN members. There was a good number of positive feedback (35%) from the junior members (residents, registrars and trainees). Moreover, hospital (21%) and academic physician (28%) took an important part in this survey. To note, EAN members represented the 60% of responders, despite the 91% of the participants were members of the National Societies. This finding highlights the lack of awareness that members of National Societies are also members of EAN. Most respondents were satisfied with the different sections currently provided, with 67% rating this service overall as “very useful” or “quite useful”. Of note, over 60% of respondents rated as “essential” or “very useful” the following sections: education corner, scientific corner, news from EAN. The 80% of the surveyed answered that they had never posted a comment on Neuropenews, suggesting that this important characteristic of the EAN blog, that favors an interactive approach with the readers, is poorly used. Finally, suggestions for additional services and improvements included: more information for young EAN members, more news about European congresses, and more information about neurology-related specialties.
We thank all participants for the time dedicated to our survey, and we will do our best to satisfy their requests and to make more interactive our blog.
Dr. Antonella Macerollo is member of the EAN Neuropenews editorial team and works currently at the Queen’s Square National Hospital in London, UK
