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.

In recent years, through the advancement of imaging technologies (such as MRI, PET, CT, among others) clinical localisation of lesions of the central nervous system (CNS) pre-surgery has made possible for neurosurgeons to plan and navigate away from functional brain locations when removing tumours. However, neuronavigation in the surgical management of brain tumours remains a significant challenge, due to the inability to maintain accurate spatial information of lesioned and non-lesioned locations intraoperatively. To answer this challenge, we have put together a team of engineers, physicists, data scientists and neurosurgeons to develop an innovative, all-optical intraoperative imaging system based on (i) hyperspectral imaging (HSI) for rapid, multi wavelength spectral acquisition, and (ii) artificial intelligence (AI) for image reconstruction and molecular fingerprint recognition. Our intraoperative HSI system (HyperProbe) will (1) map, monitor and quantify biomolecules of interest; (2) be handheld and user-friendly; (3) apply AI-based methods for the reconstruction of spectral images, the analysis of spatio-spectral data and the development and quantification of novel biomarkers. We will validate the developed capacity in phantoms, in vivo against gold standard modalities in neuronavigational imaging, and finally provide proof-of principle during brain tumour surgery. HyperProbe aims at providing functional and structural information on biomarkers of interest that is currently missing during neuro-oncological interventions.

This proposal comes in the wake of the intense scrutiny of nursing and other healthcare services in the UK for failures of care (Francis 2010) and the conclusions we have drawn from our literature reviews as well as from conversations between colleagues who took part in our previous European projects (IENE1-3) can be summarised as follows:1. We know very little about how compassion is taught in the classroom, even less on how its learning is facilitated in practice, and nothing about how this is measured.2. Although all humans have the capacity to be compassionate, how this is demonstrated and understood varies between individuals and between cultural groups.3. Compassionate leaders make the best role models for nurses and other healthcare professionals in practice, who in their turn become compassionate role models to students.4. Compassionate care, leads to higher levels of patient/family satisfaction.5. Higher levels of satisfaction contribute to faster more effective healing, with higher levels of compliance and lower costs.This project aims to improve the quality of training for nurses and health care professionals in the delivery of compassionate and cultural competent care which responds to the healthcare sector needs.Specific objectives: 1. Systematically review empirical literature pertaining to universal components of compassion, as well as the measurement and practice of compassion;2. Construct, pilot and implement a self assessment ‘compassion measuring tool’ (CMT);3. Design new training and work based learning model, for the development of compassion skills of nurses and health care professionals based on an analysis of their needs; 4. Develop an intervention which will promote the learning, practice and support of compassion-in-practice; this will begin with the development of nursing and healthcare leaders;5. Evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on service providers and users;6. Make all project tools freely available on a dedicated website;7. Hold an international conference;8. Establish a network of people working on ‘compassion’ projects for knowledge share and co-creation of knowledge.Institutions from seven countries will participate in this project: a) Middlesex University London, UK (co-ordinator), b) Edunet, Romania, c)Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus, d) Marmara University Pendik Research and Training Hospital, e) Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Senese, Italy, f) University College Lillebaelt, Denmark, g) Universitat De Valencia, Spain. The partnership is a mixture of universities, VET institutions and hospital services The project will begin with a rigorous review of the literature around culturally competent compassion (theoretical and practical learning and measuring of it). The first stage will be followed by an analysis of the learning needs of those working in leadership positions in nursing and at least two other healthcare professions. The results of stages 1 & 2 will be used to develop the Delphi studies (to design a uniquely innovative measuring tool and an European model for the development of role models to promote and support culturally competent and compassionate care). Once the outputs of the Delphi studies are finalised the curriculum for the healthcare leaders as well as the learning tools for their educational intervention will be piloted and finalised. The intervention will address the critical role of senior managers and practitioners in setting values, expectations and behaviours which promote and support culturally competent compassionate care. Another innovation of this project is the adoption of the open educational resources (OER) approach to provide new learning opportunities which will be embedded in the online training platform and will support individuals to upgrade their existing skills, knowledge and experience as well as gaining new ones. Further, the proposed knowledge exchange network will bring together healthcare professionals from across Europe and possibly beyond, in order to share good practices and co-create knowledge tools during the project’s life and after the projects ends thus assuring its sustainability and long-term impact.The results of the project will be disseminated during national/local seminars and a European conference. In the long term, we believe that healthcare practitioners and service providers across Europe will benefit through accessing the project’s OERs.This project will impact on all five points outlined in the first section of this summary..

IES Francesc de Borja Moll is a secondary school located in Palma de Mallorca, just a few minutes outside the city center. We provide VET certificates in the areas of Health, Personal Image, Computer and Communications, Commerce and Trade, and Basic VET in Hairdressing and Beauty..The labor market on the island of Mallorca is highly internationalized, so it is becoming more necessary to have skills in foreign languages, especially in English, to enter the job market well adapted. Good professional skills are also needed to adapt to this international market.From the year 2001, our school has participated in international projects managed by the Consulate of Education of the Government of the Balearic Islands, and in 2012 we started to implement and manage our own projects.The goal of our present project is that our students can take part in job training centers abroad, and that our teachers and team directors can make observational visits to other European education centers.With these actions, we intend to gain the following results.Regarding our students: Improve their professional skills, working methods, products, techniques and processes in a different way than they commonly use. Improve their proficiency in a foreign language, preferably in English. Improve their personal autonomy and confidence in their own abilities and futures. Contribute to the competitiveness of the participants in a highly internationalized job market.Regarding the teachers and members of the management team : Introduce new methods, techniques and activities in the teaching-learning process. Improve proficiency in English. Introduce new organizational and management methods.To undertake the project, we have two partners in Finland, two in the UK, one in Germany and one in Italy. All but our Italian partner, a hospital, are educational institutions of vocational training that collaborate with us in finding the most suitable companies for our students, while acting as host organizations for participating teachers in mobilities.Ultimately, we aim to improve the quality of professional lessons we teach in our center, become a tradition the On the Job Training (OJT) in Europe, and form an active part of the process of European integration in which we are immersed. We also aim to improve the image of Vocational Education Training in our environment and to be a reference to local and European level in the participation and leadership of international projects.