"The chief goal of the ""SAFEMEDIC"" 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 and developed a complex multi-stakeholder, inter-disciplinary course for healthcare students, predominantly focused on paramedics and nurses. The didactic materials and project’s intellectual outputs may also be helpful for other health workers such as physicians and physiotherapists. The International Labor Organization has recognized the medical profession as the second most vulnerable occupational group in the workplace. Our needs analysis proved that violence against healthcare professionals is a serious problem across Europe. Below are some of our findings: Out of the persons who had had prior experience with patients only 5,9% said that they had never been verbally assaulted by patients and 62,5% were victims of physical assault by patients at least once. 83,4% of respondents claimed that healthcare professionals are more or much more likely to be victim of verbal and physical assault during work then other professions. 47,1% have never taken part in a course on how to deal with threatening situations in the workplace, while only 19,6% of them took part in a course catered for the medical professions at work or at university. Only 7,8% of respondents answered that healthcare professionals in their countries receive rather enough training in dealing with threatening situations in the workplace. 54,9% answered ""definitely not"" and 37,3% answered ""rather not"". To the question ""Do you feel that a practical course to support health care professionals deal with aggressive patients would increase the overall safety of health care professionals?"" 43,1% answered ""definitely yes"" and 47,1% answered ""rather yes"". This project combined the knowledge and experience of 6 international partners to create a comprehensive interactive online course for healthcare professionals on how to act in difficult situations at the workplace. The project was addressed mainly to students of medical sciences. All partner universities integrated the course in their regular teaching programme. We suggest other European universities to do the same. The course is around 80 hours of learning time and we suggest 4 ECTS points for anyone who finishes all 4 modules. The course will also be of great use to persons already working in healthcare. The course was created specifically so that most of it can be taught via blended learning. The whole course is available online on Moodle and the practical part will be accessible in the form of learning materials, allowing an instructor to conduct practical training. After logging onto the website https://moodle.safemedic.eu you will find yourself in the ""cockpit"" of five SAFEMEDIC courses, where you choose the language version of the course. The following versions are available:English, Czech, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovenian.The course materials can be used sequentially or selectively, depending on your needs. The learning content of the course is organized into the following modules:· Introductory section· Module 1-1: Violence and aggression - anthropological perspective· Module 1-2: Violence and aggression - psychological perspective· Module 2-1: Violence and aggressive behaviour - legal perspective· Module 2-2: Risk management· Module 3: Negotiations· Module 4: Techniques of de-escalating aggression in patients in a hospital settingTo access the course, you need to create your account, which is done automatically and the only information you are expected to provide is your name and e-mail address. In this way you will acquire the “Student” status, which will give you access to all the materials needed by a learner. To use all the resources of the course you need the “Non-editing teacher” status – if you need it, please contactthe administrator of the course.Every educational institution wishing to use the course as its own should contact the administrator, download the full package of the course free of charge and place it on its moodle platform (which will allow making any changes and/or amendments, enlisting students and observing their operations on the platform, etc.). Since almost all the videos are streamed, the whole course is compressed to only ca. 300 MB.A printed handbook was also created with instructions on how to access and use the online materials, how to prepare and conduct practical classes, and with many additional resources. The leader of the project – Lipinski University in Kielce, Poland (Wyższa Szkoła Ekonomii, Prawa i Nauk Medycznych im.prof. Edwarda Lipińskiego, www.wseip.edu.pl) is ready to provide teachers and students with the printed version of “The Guide”. The book, as many other educational materials, are also available for download from the course platform."

Background:----------------------VET trainers need to be urgently assisted to catch up with the range of digital technology advancements taking place in the healthcare sector as a result of Industry 4.0 technologies. There is a need to provide European healthcare VET trainers and mentors with a one-stop toolkit that provides them with an open repository of relevant training resources including training material, e-learning content and relevant case-studies of industry 4.0 technologies as applied in health care scenarios.Health care professionals are working adults that need to be supported with extending their competences to cater for the range of digital technologies infiltrating the health sector such as 3D printing, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. For this reason, educators as well as other personnel involved in training such health care professionals urgently need a VET toolkit to aid them in effectively in reaching this goal.Objectives:------------------The main aim of this Project called digi4HEALTH (A Digital VET Toolkit for Promoting the 4th Industrial Revolution in the European Health Sector) is to develop a novel digital toolkit by which European VET Trainers and health sector mentors can reach out and assist healthcare professionals and stakeholders to catch up with technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution. To achieve this aim, the following objectives have been set:OB1: To develop a Curriculum targeted at healtcare personnel to learn about Heath 4.0 and its underlying technologies;OB2: To develop twelve case-studies portraying how different technologies can be used in a Health 4.0 environmentOB3: To develop an e-Learning platform explicitly for Heath4.0 and its underlying technologies0B4: To develop an innovative digital VET trainers toolkit integrating a set of training resources including case-studies, fact sheets, presentations and e-learning content OB5: To evaluate the digital VET toolkit with a set of health care professionals in one of the partner countriesOB6: To disseminate & exploit the digi4Health project results Number and Profile of Participants:----------------------------------------------------------To address these goals, the digi4HEALT project brings together six European entities ranging from VET Training Institutions, public HEI, private technology service providers, an international network of health workforce educators, a health and social innovation enterprise as well as a technology park with access to expertise in digital and medical technologies. These partners were purposely chosen to ensure a good balance between experts in VET pedagogy, Continous Professional Development and curriculum development, Industry 4.0 digital technologies, as well as stakeholders from the heatlhcare target sector.Results & Methodology:--------------------------------------On completion, the digi4HEALTH project will deliver the following results (R):R1: A novel VET Curriculum explicitly addressing the training needs of helping healthcare personnel to catch up with Health4.0 digital technologiesR2: A set of case-studies which VET trainers and heathcare mentors can use to demonstrate how Health4.0 digital technologies can be exploited in a heathcare service environmentR3: Novel VET training material, fact sheets and resources based on the curriculum (R1) above that will be openly available for customisation by VET trainers/mentors beyond the project partnersR4: An original digi4HEALTH e-Learning platform integrating the case-studies (R2), training material and resources (R3)R5: An innovative digital VET Toolkit that openly provides access from a single point of entry,me to the resources developed including the Curriculum, the case-studies, the courseware as well as the e-Learning course. Accompanying the Toolkit will be a framework guiding the VET trainers and healthcare mentors on how to use the Toolkit resources.The three phases (PH) involved in the digi4HEALTH implementation methodology are : - PH1: Planning Phase - PH2: Solution Development Phase - PH3: Solution Testing & Exploitation PhasePotential Impact and Long-Term Benefits------------------------------------------------------------------As the main output, The Toolkit will be an open type VET educational resources, it is expected to have a major impact on European VET trainers and healthcare mentors beyond the digi4HEALTH consortium too, as this Toolkit will give them open access to a range of digital resources they can use and even customize for their own training needs. As partner INHWE has a range of members both from Europe and beyond, the project outputs will be exposed to a spectrum of VET Trainers, mentors and learners in the healthcare sector. As a consequence of this project, a large number of European VET trainers and healthcare sector stakeholders will be able to update their skills on Health4.0 technologies.

"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 is best used in an interdisciplinary environment which this project will foster 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. Healthcare systems across Europe are experiencing a growing number of healthcare professionals, i.e. Nurses, Doctors, Ancillary care staff, affected by “burn-out”, substance misuse, relationship traumas and increased vulnerability to mental ill-health. Long-term psychological and physical damage is currently causing healthcare professionals to leave, in addition the impact of financial burdens to access higher education for training has also caused a reduction in the numbers of healthcare professionals. Europe must recognise that a curriculum that incorporates a more rounded model which includes: the promotion of selfcare and life-balance for the individual, a recognition of the person’s heritage & culture, and ensuring that the holistic care of the student/professional, is critical. Simultaneously, the emotional resilience required for the impact of vulnerable patients requires the students’ background to be woven into their thinking and being, to reconstruct the meaning of the professional. Currently I am using storytelling to deliver groupwork and individual contact to support trainee Nurses, doctors, auxiliary staff and the patient’s loved ones. Storytelling is able to translate and make available in a sensitive and appropriate manner, the hidden and silent stories of both, patients, healthcare professional and loved-ones. It also seeks to provide healing and adaptation to various social and cultural environments for the group and individual. It embodies thoughts, knowledge and heritage, and reveals the language of the world and community in which we live.Building a truly interprofessional approach to storytelling is crucial to this project. There is significant evidence to indicate that effective interprofessional education (IPE) is an innovative strategy that enables effective collaborative practice. Interprofessional education (IPE) is a necessary step in preparing a prepared health workforce. It is proven that collaborative practice strengthens health systems and improves health outcomes (WHO, 2010). Europe faces increased demand for health services due to ageing populations, rising patient mobility, and a diminishing supply of health workers caused by retirement rates that surpass recruitment rates. This places great emphasis on the health workforce with the majority of health system change enacted by healthcare professionals themselves. A preparatory workshop was held at the European Conference of Health Workforce Education & Research in Dublin, Ireland in January 2019. The feedback received by the consortium proves the need for a European wide project to ensure that storytelling is easily included into EU healthcare education programmes:“This workshop enabled us to consider the people behind our service users, and to acknowledge their stories and to consider what was important to them. Eli enabled us to look at health and social care from the perspective of the service user and to consider how they were feeling. He stressed how important it was for us to connect with service users on a human level as a person.”“I was at Eli’s workshop and think it has great potential”""Eli's rehumanizing workshop encouraged us to recrystallize our 'human identity' and place it at the heart of our professional commitments and routines""Every story told fires the imagination, highlights diversity, challenges injustice, confirms the humanity of a human being and re-establishes positive relationships. This project will spread these skills throughout Europe."