SAFEMEDIC – Personal Safety of Medical Personnel in Difficult Professional Situations (2018-2020)
The International Labour Organization ranked medical professions as the second most vulnerable to violence in the workplace. This view was supported by the consortium’s pre-project research which showed that only 5.9% respondents had never been verbally assaulted by patients and 62.5% were victims of physical assault by patients at least once.
The chief goal of the project was to improve the workplace safety of healthcare professionals by increasing their skills and competences in dealing with difficult situations. To achieve this the project consortium designed a complex multi-stakeholder, inter-disciplinary course for healthcare students, predominantly focused at paramedics and nurses.
The project developed an educational course which results in an increase in the conflict management skills and knowledge of healthcare professionals. The course created a uniform, comprehensive and complete programme applicable to all partner countries, while also being adaptable enough for use in the rest of Europe and beyond. The majority of educational materials are available online, free of charge, in the form of multimedia interactive materials realised in a Moodle format.
Project Website: https://www.safemedic.eu/
StoryAidEU – Humanizing Healthcare Education through the use of Storytelling (2019-2021)
Current healthcare training curriculum relies upon a comprehensive understanding of the bio-medical model of medicine. However, it has been recognised that a curriculum that incorporates a more rounded model is critical. To explore a new model of healthcare training, storytelling can become a crucial tool for educators to show the hidden and silent stories of both, patients, healthcare processional, loved one, and vulnerable people who are receiving care.
Storytelling can be used to ensure a round approach to healthcare professionals’ education. Storytelling is best used in an interdisciplinary environment which this project fostered by creating an innovative multi-professional, inter-stakeholder approach to bridge the gap between current educational models and a more rounded model of the future.
The project conducted a full review of interprofessional education tools from across the globe, assessmed humanism policies and procedures on a macro and micro level in Europe and conducted essential research into how storytelling approaches can be used to improve healthcare training. These three areas were combined into a dedicated training curriculum for healthcare educators. With the final outcomes being a coursebook, learning videos and an interactive lecture.
Project website: https://storyaid.eu/
I-SPAD: Innovative – Simulation Pedagogy for Academic Development, Higher Education Partnership Erasmus+ Award
Led by the educators from the University of Malta, we developed training programme in simulation teaching and learning for nurse educators, we created a set of three simulation learning resources regarding community care (the NURSkit) and carried out research around the use of the simulation learning resources.
As nurse educators, we share the knowledge and awareness that the use of simulation in nurse education is favourable on many counts. Also, we all recognise that the increased use of simulation in nurse education carries various implications and challenges. We sought to address (i) an identified gap in training for nurse educators regarding the use of simulation in teaching and learning and (ii) an identified gap in simulation resources regarding community care.
Project website: https://www.um.edu.mt/projects/ispad/