Training health care teams in intercultural communication and patient safety Erasmus Project

Project Title

Training health care teams in intercultural communication and patient safety

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The “Training health care teams in intercultural communication and patient safety” project addressed the complex issue of patient safety, failure of which results in millions of patient safety incidents each year, with severe consequences and unnecessary suffering for patients and their families as well as millions of public Euros in compensation.

The project was a continuation of the other four projects carried out under the “Intercultural Education of Nurses in Europe” (IENE) topic initiative, which started in 2008 (www.ieneproject.eu).

In order to match their skills to the competences demanded for safe patient care, this IENE5 project addressed the link between the levels of intercultural communication within members of MMHTs and patient safety and aimed to increase the knowledge and skills of members of healthcare teams, in three major areas: Intercultural communication, Working in multicultural teams and Patient safety.

Partners from five European countries (Middlesex University of London, UK ; University College Lillebaelt, Denmark; Cyprus University of Technology; Nursing School Edunet, Romania; and Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Senese, Italy) brought relevant and complementary skills and human resources to create an innovative European Training Model, aimed at promoting knowledge and skills of intercultural communication, working in MMHTs and patient safety and develop training content, learning and evaluation tools, which are now available on the project website.

The partners built a highly interactive platform MOOC (Massive Open On-line Course) based on co-learning and co-creation, containing learning and self-assessment activities and tools. After training 60 facilitators from the participating countries to support and guide the learners’ communities on the MOOC, 150 participants from the project’s partner countries and approximately 500 nurses and health care professionals from across the world were recruited to participate in the training on the created MOOC.

To promote the intercultural communication culture and patient safety values, 5 national seminars were organized in the partners’ countries attended by the managers, training providers and potential users, who learned about the created resources and how to use the MOOC.

In carrying out the project, the pedagogical approaches used were innovative and learner-centered, based on digital integration in learning. The MOOC’s approach to learning was highly interactive and its underpinning philosophy was that of co-learning through co-creation. Our MOOC was mainly provided in English with some translation and the students were able to conduct their discussions, write their blogs and prepare their outputs in Romanian, Italian, Danish or Greek languages. The multilingual aspect of this MOOC promoted co-operation, communication, team-working, respect of diverse opinions, sensitivity and tolerance to people from different cultures and backgrounds, as well as increased language competence, digital skills, flexibility and creativity.

The main outputs of the project were the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and the Open Educational Resources (OER), available on the project web site (www.ieneproject.eu), report on the training needs, Innovative teaching and learning Model, Educational resources, curricula and materials, Guide for facilitators, Brochure about the learning methodology using the MOOC .

The nurses and healthcare professionals who participated in the learning activities on the MOOC enhanced knowledge and skills about patient safety, deep appreciation of the benefits of effective communication and team work, confidence in dealing with patient safety.
Our project contributed towards building culturally competent and compassionate teams. The learning which occurred during the MOOC will hopefully lead to a reduction in patient safety incidents and thus reduction in patient harm and levels of compensation. We hope that it has also contributed to higher levels of staff job satisfaction and improved quality of patient care.

Our model, curriculum and learning/assessment tools are now embedded in the IENE platform and are freely available to be used and also developed using creative commons license. The course modules, learning outcomes, learning activities, assessment methods, reading lists, suggested content and on-line resources and links to outside resources etc. can be used freely for distance learning or some parts of them may be used as portions of a conventional or blended training. It is anticipated that our innovative model and the MOOC will become popular across Europe and continue to be provided by the partner organizations and be used by other organizations after the end of the project and the created resources may be adapted and set up in new wider-ranging MOOCs for education processes across Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 293758,94 Eur

Project Coordinator

MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY HIGHER EDUCATION CORPORATION & Country: UK

Project Partners

• PROFESSIONSHOJSKOLEN LILLEBAELT
• TECHNOLOGIKO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU
• Asociatia EDUNET
• AZIENDA OSPEDALIERA UNIVERSITARIA SENESE