5th AMEA Conference 09′, Bandung, Indonesia, 4-7 October 2009
It was fascinating and memorable experience participating in the 5th ASEAN Medical Education Association Conference 09 (AMEA). I have participated as a presenter as well as conference participant. I have presented my thesis research on “Prevalence & Sources of Stress among Medical Students in Universiti Sains Malaysia” in this conference. I felt so happy to share all the research finding with the conference participants. There were many questions being asked to me by the audience during my presentation, I felt like being ‘viva’ just like ‘dissertation viva’. Thanks to Allah for blessing me with calmness to answer all questions. I managed to answer the questions calmly and appropriately. The audience from various backgrounds, experiences and positions gave me very positive and encouraging feedbacks about my presentation. Some of the feedbacks can be turned into research topic. On top of that, i have made a lot of of friends during conference. I hope to get in touch with them in the future.
My deepest appreciation to Universiti Sains Malaysia for sponsoring me to participat in the conference. I have gained and learned a lot of new skills and knowledge about the current issues in Medical Education. Most of the issues are related to the student asessment, clinical education and faculty development. 
Majority of the keynote speakers have mentioned that the main problem in medical education was related to the student assessment such as methods of assessment, validity and reliability of assessment, declining of direct observation assessment, less recognition given to students by the medical teacher, and less feedback given to students by the medical teachers. All these issues contribute to the ‘flawed assessement’ as mentioned by Prof James Ware. S0lution for these was systematic ‘Faculty Development’.
Another importance issue was Clinical Education given by Prof John Norcini. He have eloborated and explained the trends and challanges in Clinical Education. He have mentioned that the most important thing we have to bare in mind is the assessment. He said that assessment drives learning. Thus, he said the way we plan our assessment is very vital. The right assessment will drive student learning into right direction.
In the conference, I was awarded 2 awards.
The awards were:
1. Facultas of Medicine Universitas Padjadjaran (FMUP) Award
2. 3rd Winner of Best Paper Presentation.
I’m so happy with the unexpected ‘rezeki’ and thanks to the The Al-Mighty Allah for this ‘rezeki’.
I went to shoping with my beloved wife in the last day of the conference. We were so happy to buy some sourveniers to our family, friends and staffs. We went the factory outlets and we found that the items price were far cheaper compared to anywhere else. We have spend about 1.5 million rupiah to get all the items we want. I bougth 2 track suits and 2 Batik shirts. My wife got a new beatiful GUCCI handbag. The prices were so cheap… we were very happy during shoping. We hope we will 
have another opportunity to shop in Bandung again 
We stayed at Arion Swiss Belhotel for almost 6 days and the hospitality shown by the hotel staffs were superb… I gave 5 stars. The food served by the hotel was almost similar with Malaysian food therefore we can eat all the food without any difficulties. The most important thing is all the foods were HALAL. 
The hotel condition was very pleasant and harmony.
To cut the story short, overall we were very happy participating the conference and we were also enjoyed staying in Bandung. We hope we will there again in the future but not for conference but for shoping ONLY.
That’s all I wanted to tell for now. If there any other story I will write it later because I don’t have much time to write all things happen during our conference.
Photos:
First day of AMEA. The conference was held at Hilton Hotel, Bandung.
Hilton Hotel Scenary. Ummm… it is so beautiful. Hope to stay there if we are visiting back to Bandung.
Last day we were at Arion Swiss Belhotel. While waiting for taxi we asked one of the hotel receiptionist to take our photo. Then we gave him 30,000 rupiah as token . everything need money lol…
i will post a lot more photos when i’m free. TQ.
