<< Background >>The UPPSCAle strategic partnership is a powerful transnational collaboration aiming to innovate, improve and standardise Bachelor Physiotherapy pain science curricula across Europe. Pain science is a core field in a physiotherapy curriculum and physiotherapists are essential members of healthcare teams managing people with pain within a biopsychosocial framework. Chronic pain affects millions of people worldwide across the lifespan and is a global cause of disability in the developed and developing world alike. Poorly managed pain is costly not only for the affected individuals and their families (12-30% EU member states) but also for governments and taxpayers with estimated direct and indirect costs of chronic pain are between 2-3% of GDP across member states (annual cost of 441 billion euro to Europe).Pain management is the primary reason people attend physiotherapy for treatment. The International Association for the Study of Pain 2010 Declaration of Montreal states that all patients have the right to have access to the appropriate assessment and treatment of pain by adequately trained healthcare professionals. However, there is currently no standardised curriculum or common training framework for physiotherapists, with professional education about pain management repeatedly documented as inadequate worldwide. Hence the inequities in pain science knowledge across Europe results in inequitable health service delivery and costs and most importantly to significant differences in patients quality of life.Greater connectivity between higher education systems with standardised curricula will also reduce obstacles that face physiotherapists applying to practice their profession across geographical borders in EU member states. Once graduated Physiotherapists are consistently the 4th most mobile regulated profession that travels abroad to practice their profession in the EU. Under the EU Directive 2005/36/EC in principle physiotherapists are permitted freedom of movement to practice their profession across geographical borders of EU member states. However, as there is no common training framework for physiotherapists, and training requirements differ from country to country, having professional qualifications recognised can be challenging between one EU member state and another. A standardised curriculum in pain science physiotherapy could reduce challenges that graduates face and serve as a test case for physiotherapy curricula as well as other health professional Bachelor programmes. In summary, there is a need for the exchange of best practices pain science through the development of sustainable products for faculty as well as students. This project is therefore timely, with the right partners and with the right blend of expertise to develop a cadre of highly trained academics capable of addressing current and future needs.<< Objectives >>The UPPSCAle project objectives are focusing on harmonising pain science education across Europe by offering a roadmap for all academics in Bachelor programmes seeking to ensure their graduates can meet the evolving challenges of pain management. The project will take advantage of the considerable expertise of all the partners involved to achieve this through the various project activities and outputs that can be utilised by academics across EuropeUPPSCAle has three main objectives:Objective 1: Curriculum bench marking of Bachelor Physiotherapy pain science curricula against international best practice (European Pain Federation EFIC Pain Physiotherapy curriculum) to identify gaps in learning. ; Objective 2: Augmenting knowledge and skills through evidence-based professional practices;Objective 3: Enhancing and standardising Teaching and learning methodology based on dynamic Open Education Resource that addresses identified limitations to support academics with student learning across Europe and beyond.<< Implementation >>Three core project activities (PA), one building on the next will be undertaken(i)Needs Analysis: A curriculum review process mapping partners current pain science curricula against international best practice (European Pain Federation Pain Physiotherapy curriculum) will be undertaken, facilitated by experts in curriculum design in NUID UCD Teaching and Learning Centre.(ii) Capacity Building: Two week long face to face Teach-the-Teacher Pain Schools will be developed to standardise and up-skill academic partners with both theoretical and hands-on skills development sessions. Materials developed for and during the Pain Schools Outputs will be incorporated into the Open Education Resource.(iii) Addressing Limitations: An open education resource will be developed and maintained on key and emerging pain science knowledge to ensure that Bachelor Physiotherapy programme curricula content can meet the evolving challenges of pain management across Europe and beyond. Through all three core PA dissemination of progress and project results (PR) will be disseminated widely through the UPPSCAle communication strategy in partner countries and beyond to allow other institutions join in the curriculum review and enhancement process, to build a community of physiotherapy academic staff (special interest group) to further develop and enhance pain science education.<< Results >>This 24 month project results include a number of sustainable outputs that will enhance and standarise pain science education in Bachelor Physiotherapy programmes across Europe:1. Open educational ResourceThe OER will house all educational outputs from the UPPSCAle project; gaps identified through the curriculum review process can be addressed by accessing the Teach-the-Teacher Pain School Manual and the knowledge and skills content on the OER. This will augment and promote state-of-the-art pain science education that healthcare professionals, patients and health services will benefit from. The OER will be hosted by UCV and be accessible.2. Open source files accessibilityUPPSCAle Project results will all be freely available for institutions removing barrier of funding issues that arise in institutions across Europe.3. Curricula availability & comparisonsAcademics can review and augment their current pain science curricula using a pedagogically sound approach against international best practice recommendations (European Pain Federation EFIC Pain Physiotherapy curriculum). 4. Special interest group The UPPSCAle project will develop a special interest group for academic physiotherapist teaching pain science to engage with each other, sharing knowledge on the topic. It will also allow for discussion around the development of a common training framework for physiotherapy education. This would ultimately enhance patient care, reduce healthcare costs and limit obstacles faced by physiotherapists seeking to have their qualifications recognised when they wish to practice professionally across geographical borders of European Union member states. 5. InterconnectivityThis project will further enhance inter-connectively and teaching excellence between universities in Europe, increasing their capacity to operate jointly at transnational level, boosting internationalisation of their educational and research activities, and through exchanging or developing new practices and methods as well as sharing and confronting ideas.

"The overall purpose of the project ""Digital education in nursing"" project (DEN) is to modernize the existing curriculum for nursing students by developing digital modules regarding lectures / examinations into new forms of education. The project will run for 24 months and the expected results are supposed to have long-term positive effects on nursing education in the EU. The pandemic has been the reason why the traditional academic education in nursing has forced to be transformed into digital forms without the lecturers being given the opportunity to adapt the pedagogy to the digital education. If we do not make this transformation in a systematic and student-friendly way, we will have fewer nurses / specialist nurses and deteriorating patient care that is not in line with the EU-s recommendations and goals. The lecturers need support to develop their pedagogical skills from the traditional way to a more digital way in order to maintain the required and necessary high quality in nurse education. The traditional way is not sufficient, or applicable, to meet today's requirements especially not for satisfactory examinations. Previous research has shown, that the kind of examination methods chosen, are important for how the education is designed, and in the next step in what way the examination is able to test the required knowledge in order to guarantee that the students will fulfill the requirements of the teaching's goals. The traditional pedagogical method is not sufficient, or applicable, to meet today's requirements with digital teaching. This can have a negative impact on students' fulfillment of learning goals and reduce the students possibilities to succeed in their examination. In the long run, this may contribute to a reduction, i.e. a deficiency, of nurses in the whole EU.The project consortium consists of five partner organizations representing five EU countries (Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia and Sweden). The consortium's strength is based on the competence of each partner organization that represents different skills, knowledge and experiences from nursing education and digital education and relevant development areas to ensure a successful delivery of the project's results. All partner organizations have a strong tradition in nursing education and have already successfully collaborated in a European (Erasmus +) project (see project references). All partners organisation have worked with the digital nursing education at different level during pandemic 2020.The primary objectives of our project are to enhance the ability of lecturers at the involved universities, and participating organisations, to provide high quality education, including digital education •to focus on building teaching capacity to implement, with both blended, and on line, teaching and learning; •to develop digital pedagogical competences of lecturers, enabling them to deliver high quality digital education; and to develop and/or use high quality digital content such as innovative online resources and tools. •to share and exchange experiences, expertise, and resources, and in collaboration, create a digital course of mutual interest•to collaborate regarding digital technology by using different providers and experts in educational technologies and with experiences in relevant pedagogical practice.The expected results of the DEN project are the following:1. teachers and lecturers will have an increased understanding of digital teaching pedagogic;2. to identity, adapt to, and develop the necessary measurements, assessments and actions required for quality enhancement of digital teaching and learning processes;3. to train lecturers and other teaching staff for harnessing pedagogical and methodological principles and new modes of teaching and learning to be able to adapt to higher nursing education.4. to develop methodology and platforms for broader integration between digital teaching and learning for postgraduate studies in nursing.Our project will have long-term benefits both for our PO as well as other universities. We will modernize and renew and make flexible curricula with innovations for nursing education. We will publish our results and our handbook online, thus enabling other universities to use the results of our project."

<< Background >>The “Beyond the Emergency. Telecare for Non-Communicable Diseases through Simulation Techniques- BeEmTel” project was created as a response to the recent pandemic. Covid-19 revealed weaknesses in the health-care system, especially in connection with the care of fragile patients, and in the training system, which remains unable to tackle the important challenge of reforming the ways that patients are treated and monitored. By 2050, in Europe, the proportion of older adults will most likely double from 11% to 22% of the total population. Several diseases are associated with a progressive reduction in functional capacity, leading to a persistent need for care over time. At the European level, these diseases account for roughly 80% of the causes of mortality in people over 65. Most Non-Communicable Diseases (henceforth NCDs) are deeply connected with aging. NCDs include type 2 diabetes, obesity, respiratory and heart disease, and dementia, to name a few. They are gaining increasing interest in the EU due to their impact on early mortality, as well as on the levels of social and economic assistance they require around the world, and especially on the European continent. Efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic raised the need to improve the quality of care for patients with NCDs and mitigate the impact for patients, their families and society. To guarantee constant and high-quality support for NCD patients, family members and caregivers, medical assistance will be increasingly decentralized at a territorial level, even more so in the post-Covid era. Fostering the decentralization of medical facilities through an extensive health-care network – made potentially manageable thanks to innovative technological tools – could provide a practical solution, which has already been put into practice in some European regions. It is envisioned that the new profile of a health and social care professional will include additional advanced skills. For example, physicians, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists will require multidisciplinary training that includes digital skills and more specific practical/clinical competencies. Health and social care must aim to provide continuous assistance at the local level for managing patients with chronic conditions. Given the main gaps highlighted in the G20 digital health report of December 2020, it is time to strengthen specialist training courses for additional skills so that NCD patients can be taken care of with telemedicine support at the European level. In such a challenging context, the BeEmTel Partnership is convinced that there is an urgent need to promote strategies for improving teaching methods in the clinical practice, both face-to-face and remote. This is essential in order to meet the needs and continuous attention required by the most fragile subjects with NCDs as well as address the need for support by family members and caregivers. The pandemic crisis accelerated the adoption of distance simulation (i.e., Live Simulation and Clinical Observation Scenarios Online), making an inclusive and high-quality multidisciplinary training possible for a variety of recipients with social and economic difficulties, educational differences, and physical impairments.BeEmTel complies with the requirements of the 2021-2027 Digital Education Action Plan, as digital technology, together with innovative education programmes, can help prepare undergraduate students and future professionals to develop advanced digital and technological skills.<< Objectives >>The BeEmTel Partnership’s main objective is to create an innovative European curriculum dedicated to Telecare for Non-Communicable Diseases through educational tools based on remote (and face-to-face) simulation techniques. Healthcare simulation, one of the best pedagogical tools for medical education, consists of techniques aimed at reproducing emergency medical situations in a secure teaching/learning environment. Healthcare Simulation promotes and enhances a multidisciplinary and multi-professional approach; The BeEmTel Partnership believes that distance simulation techniques - like Telesimulation - should already be implemented by graduating level students. Telesimulation is one of the various simulation experiences created by the simulation community. It refers to a new teaching methodology whereby telecommunication and Healthcare Simulation are combined in order to provide effective educational support. A Telesimulation event is designed to represent a simulated telemedicine meeting, and it may also refer to distance-based learning opportunities for “off-campus” simulated training. In this way, BeEmTel aims at providing innovative education that can be available to learners from various disciplines. The BeEmTel training project has the ambitious goal of meeting the new healthcare needs, which will undergo a profound shift in the future. Introducing innovative educational methods is one of the main, shared aims behind the higher education e-Course. This goal is achievable for the medium- and long-term, even beyond the end of the course and availability of European funds.From the learners’ perspective, the role of simulation in healthcare education is to transition an academic learner to a practising clinician. This is a complex development process, of course, so the best way to direct such a transition is to consider the stages a clinical learner goes through to become more competent. BeEmTel undertakes a formative clinical distance simulation that assumes the beneficiaries are still learning, in a process that is lengthy, elaborate, and marked by milestones. In this first stage of learning, which includes the medical, psychological and technical basics, simulation methodology simplifies the concepts and demonstrates the impact of basic decisions on patient outcomes. Specifically, beneficiaries will directly experience and study the use of digital telemedicine platforms to support disease management. The strength and innovation of BeEmTel lie in already providing some of these specialised skills in basic training. The aim is to disseminate theoretical and applied knowledge through high fidelity simulations, thanks to the use of dedicated digital platforms. Such knowledge will be useful for developing a new clinical and decision-making approach as future professionals. In fact, BeEmTel will allow beneficiaries to already start gaining high-quality knowledge in order to manage health challenges as potential future professionals. Soft skills are crucial to tackling such a challenge because, due to the progressive increase in the ageing population, digital assistance will soon become one of the main forms of care. Practical teaching based on repeated simulation sessions has been shown to foster knowledge acquisition and self-assess technical skills. The BeEmTel Partnership envisions that potential learners could also become the software engineers of tomorrow, who will have to devise new AI-based communication systems in order to continue their university and working careers. All of these elements are necessary ingredients for pursuing a career in the health-care sector.<< Implementation >>The BeEmTel Partnership is composed of 7 partners (5 Countries), including 5 University institutions and 2 National Public bodies, as follows: the University of Eastern Piedmont (UPO) as organisation leader (Italy), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (LMU) (Germany), University of Thessaly (UTH) (Greece), Zdravstveno veleučilište (UAH) (Croatia), George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Târgu Mureş (UTM) (Romania), the National Telemedicine Centre (NCT), technical-scientific operational area of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) (Italy), and the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), within the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs (Romania). The main purpose of BeEmTel is to create an innovative European curriculum dedicated to Telecare for Non-Communicable Diseases through a teaching practice based on remote and face-to-face simulation techniques. Training includes an e-Course (80 hours) and live simulation techniques during two LTTA experiences (C1 and C2), in Novara at the UPO Simnova Centre and in Munich at the HSC LMU (additional 80 hours). During the implementation of BeEmTel, which is specifically customised for learners – undergraduate students from several disciplinary fields (nursing, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, engineers) – open virtual conferences (three virtual multiplier events) and two in-person multiplier events will be held with the collaboration of diverse European Associated Partners (as stakeholders). The course will take place through a digital platform, which will also include didactic materials (from papers to downloadable video lessons), short video tutorials, and the Transferability Toolkit, a tool that houses information regarding all the e-Course activities and LTTAs. The e-Course will be realised in English and the languages of countries where there is active learner involvement.In order to structure the training course, needs analyses will take place on several levels. The process of mapping needs related to the care and assistance of patients with chronic diseases will allow us to understand the training gap to be addressed and which elements to include in creating an appropriate curriculum.The multidisciplinary BeEmTel e-Course is aimed at a particular sector of the health and social care workforce that is undergoing profound and rapid change, mainly due to the pandemic crisis. The dynamic growth of a health and social care job is particularly amenable to introducing new technological tools that future social and healthcare assistants will have to master in order to manage NCD patients and their caregivers. The ability to use teleconferencing to broadcast a simulation across geographical barriers promotes an active learning of realistic scenarios and conditions, without the need of being physically present in the sim lab room. The e-Course will take place in a virtual training space that allows for communication between future professionals and sick and disadvantaged people. During a Telesimulation learning module, participants will immerse themselves in a simulated scenario and engage within the scope of the lesson.Furthermore, the LTTA activities will be planned to encourage the participatory and interactive engagement of all beneficiaries (50 learners, selected from a total of 250 participants), who will be involved in interdisciplinary activities as a class group, in small groups, and individually.<< Results >>We expect BeEmTel to have 5 project results.PR 1. Outline the curriculum for the management of chronic conditions through Telemedicine. Thanks to the literary review and a Delphi study, the BeEmTel Partnership will be able to identify the skills needed for chronic care management through the use of telemedicine. The Partnership will then define the main topic areas and learning outcomes to be translated into the planning of the e-Course and training modules. PR 2. Design the training and create the content for the modules of the “European course on management of chronic conditions through Telemedicine.” The final organisation of the modules’ contents will entail the allocation of teachers, preparation of didactic materials (including video lessons and learning tools), and the recruitment of participants from degree courses such as medicine, nursing, psychology, and engineering. PR 3. Create the digital platform for the e-Course. The digital platform ensures that all participants can access materials in English, Italian, Hungarian, Greek, Romanian, and German. The BeEmTel digital platform will house material in several languages and be a virtual hub under constant monitoring: from online lessons, to handouts in the various European languages, to participant enrolment, to forums for peer discussion and questions for teachers and tutors (who will be assigned to each module, for each country). The platform will also host the project’s virtual multiplier events.PR 4. Deliver the training course through e-Learning modules and contents – testing the pilot e-Course. To ensure equal and high-quality learning, participants will carry out an evaluation at the end of each module. Strengths and weaknesses will be identified by means of a phase including project follow-up and evaluation of the learning process effectiveness, so that any corrective measures required can be made. The LTTA workshops at UPO and LMU (C1 and C2) represent an educational challenge for teachers and an intense training experience for participants. Here the participants have the chance to enjoy being at the heart of pedagogical medical simulation. PR 4 involves an evaluation of the curriculum and skills acquired during the e-Course and LTTAs. Starting from the European Classification of Qualifications, Competencies, Skills and Occupations (ESCO, EQF), the Europass tool will be used as a reference framework to evaluate the training curriculum.PR 5. Create the Transferability Digital Toolkit (TDT), including educational resources of international best case studies and good practices. The TDT aims to support those working and participating in the design, training, management, development, delivery and promotion of learning about chronicity, telemedicine and simulation. The TDT will present tools, models, best practices, and clinical case studies related to chronic care management using innovative technology and digital media. BeEmTel will make the TDT available for free to the European community and Research Centres.Concrete goals of BeEmTel include: the course structure composed of various training modules, creation of the digital platform, its sustainability after the end of the project, and the free and accessible TDT. Hopefully, such objectives will encourage partners within the Partnership and external institutions involved as stakeholders (University Departments, local Hospitals, National and European Associations in Simulation, Nursing, and other organisations reported in Associated Partners section) to take on the pilot course and translate its strengths into educational measures. In fact, the BeEmTel Partnership expects the e-Course to promote change and an acceleration toward better continuing training, including theoretical and practical medical knowledge, for undergraduate students and early career professionals.

<< Objectives >>SIMBA aims to design and apply simulation-based learning in different stages of occupational therapy (OT) programs, to close the theory-practice gap. It will provide new methods for teaching, learning and assessment of OT competences so that students feel confident and are competent for the transition into professional practice and become active participants in their learning process. In the long term, SIMBA aims to increase the quality, safety and effectiveness of OT service delivery.<< Implementation >>All project activities are enclosed within four determined work packages (WPs). The main activities of SIMBA are the use of theoretical insights, needs analysis and data collection; SBL material development; consultation and validation activities, dissemination activities. The partnership consists of five OT programs that are regionally balanced. All partners will collaborate across different activities within the WPs, since WPs and activities are interconnected and build upon each other.<< Results >>Regarding simulation-based learning (SBL) in occupational therapy (OT), SIMBA aims to develop- a SBL framework of professional OT competences- guidelines for the application of SBL- a valid and reliable SBL assessment tool- structured case-based digital/hands-on scenarios- a SBL manual for teachers- a validated learning and dissemination web platformavailable in the 5 official languages of the partner organizations and ready to apply and disseminate into different stages of OT programs.