Aktualno

• The ABFHC submitted the ProCare project proposal directly to the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) located in Brussels. 

• The only successful project proposal from Slovenia in this year’s Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliances call for proposals.

• The ABFHC was one of 31 selected institutions out of 160 proposals.

 

JESENICE, December 6th, 2018—The Angela Boškin Faculty of Health Care (ABFHC) started implementing the international development research project ProCare, selected at this year’s Knowledge Alliances call for proposals which is part of the Erasmus+ program. A total of 160 project proposals were submitted, and 31 of these were granted. The three-year project Hospitals and faculties together for prosperous and scientific-based healthcare – ProCare, in which the ABFHC will act as project coordinator for the first time, also includes partner higher education institutions and hospitals from Slovenia, Italy, Ireland, and Spain. Its goal is to enhance cooperation between hospitals and healthcare faculties, increase the research abilities of registered nurses, and promote the implementation of evidence-based practice.

 

With a kick-off meeting that brought together all project partners, the ABFHC began coordinating an ambitious and extensive development research project co-financed by the EU’s program Erasmus+.

 

Together with its project partners, the ABFHC submitted the ProCare project proposal directly to the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), namely to the Knowledge Alliances call for proposals which is part of the Erasmus+ program. Out of the 160 project proposals submitted to the Knowledge Alliances call for proposals this year, 31 were selected. The ProCare project is the only one with a coordinator from Slovenia. 

 

Knowledge Alliances are international projects between higher education institutions and business aimed at fostering Europe’s innovation capacity and supporting the modernization of Europe’s higher education system.

 

“Together with our project partners, we aim to address two very important challenges with the ProCare project. The first challenge is how to improve research cooperation between healthcare faculties and hospitals. This is an area where many European countries, including Slovenia, have plenty of room for improvement, as such cooperation would lead to a more effective transfer of the latest research findings into practice. Faculties are often seen as being theory-oriented and criticized for not understanding practice, while hospital employees who, for example, are doctoral students, often complain that their employer does not provide sufficient support for their research work,” said Acting Dean Sanela Pivač, MSc (Nursing), RN, Senior Lecturer. “The second challenge, which is actually closely related to the first one, is the ability of registered nurses to conduct research and apply research findings into practice. So far, nurses have met with many obstacles in this field. With both challenges, we are keeping the patient in mind at all times, as research results show that evidence-based practice can significantly increase the quality and safety of healthcare provision and improve its outcomes.”

 

Five higher education institutions and three hospitals from four European countries

The Angela Boškin Faculty of Health Care is the coordinator of this project consortium which also includes the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Alicante, Spain (Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud de la Universidad de Alicante); University of Udine, Department of Medical and Biological Sciences, Italy (Universita’ Degli Studi Di Udine, Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Biologiche); University of Limerick, Department of Nursing & Midwifery, Ireland; Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Maribor, Slovenia; Jesenice General Hospital, Slovenia; Vistahermosa Clinic, Spain (Clínica Vistahermosa); and Udine Clinic, Italy (Clinica Udine).

 

 “I would especially like to emphasize our cooperation with the University of Limerick, where a best model of cooperation between a higher education institution and a hospital already exists and stands out even at the EU level. Better cooperation between the clinical and academic setting is of key importance for a constant exchange of knowledge and information between higher education lecturers and clinical practice specialists. We therefore expect that the project will help transfer Irish best practice examples into Slovenia, Italy, and Spain,” added Sanela Pivač. “In these countries, participating hospitals will create research groups and connect them with researchers in higher education institutions. Together, they will then define and investigate priority research areas which will represent a response to the actual needs in nursing and health care. Finally, the project will include the development of an online educational program on research in nursing which will be freely available and aimed at applying research findings in practice.”