Advances in Medical Education

About 550 registrants from 51 countries attended the Seventh Ottawa Conference on Medical Education and Assessment in Maastricht. We received 525 abstracts for the conference, divided into thematic poster sessions and platform presentations. Organizing the conference was an honor, and we tried to meet the high standards of a friendly and relaxed atmosphere that has characterized previous Ottawa conferences. During and after the conference, about 250 papers were submitted for publication in the conference proceedings, leaving us little time for a post-conference depression. Despite the many documents, the editors have attempted to review and edit the documents as care­ fully as possible. Occasionally, however, correspondence exceeded reasonable deadlines, preventing careful editing of a few papers. Although our editorial task was not quite finished, we included these papers. We thank the many authors for their enthusiastic and prompt response to – occasionally tedious – editorial suggestions and requests. We are sure that this collective effort has resulted in a book that will make an essential contribution to the field of medical education. The editors want to thank Jocelyn Flippo-Berger, whose expertise and perseverance in desktop publishing were a great help.