Population ageing is a long-term trend, which began several decades ago in the EU. As a result, the EU will, in the coming decades, face a number of challenges associated with an ageing society, which will have an impact on a wide range of areas (labour markets, pensions, provisions for health care etc.). Population change and the structure of the population are gaining importance in the political, economic, social and cultural context of demographic behaviour. One of the fields that is, and will be even more affected by the population ageing in the upcoming years, is the health care system, and that is why it is necessary (for the long term stability of the health care system) that people have the best possible chance to remain healthy, and stay active and independent as they become older. One of the crucial roles in this effort will be assigned to nurses and that is why it is important to raise awareness among them and among the students of nursing, as they represent the future of this profession. It is important that we enable them to obtain and share knowledge, ideas and examples of good practice on this topic with students, lectures and other experts from different EU countries and institutions. It is also essential to raise awareness among the elderly and to actively promote and enable them to be as literate and active in healthy lifestyle as possible. Based on these facts and with these goals in mind, a partnership of four HE institutions was formed: The College of Nursing in Celje, Slovenia (coordinator); Medical University of Lublin, Poland; University of Oulu, Finland and Cooperativa de La Superior Politecnico e Universitário – CESPU, Portugal and tried to make a difference. This project offered an international and interdisciplinary (nursing, medicine, sociology, psychology, physiotherapy, social gerontology and occupational therapy) approach in highlighting the importance of healthy lifestyle for aging well. The maint target groups, which were included in the project activities were the nursing students, higher education teachers and researchers and the elderly. In addition to these, the project also addressed other interested parties who wished to obtain and share knowledge, ideas, practical experience and examples of good practice from the areas under consideration among different institutions (especially higher education institutions) and different countries.The project offered the opportunity for 36 students and 22 lectures to travel and study/teach and join the intensive study programme in Slovenia and gain non-formal intercultural skills. 18 Slovenian students also took part in this project and attended intensive study progarmme and 5 lecturers of College of nursing in Celje conducted lecturers during both intensive study progarmmees. We also invited experts to contribute to the IP courses. Aditionally students and lecturers took part in the project via virtual mobility with the help of new information and communication technologies. And about 450 elderly were involved in project activities, mainly in research activities, IP and activities for raising awarrenes. Research activities that were carried out during the project enabled students of nursing to critically and analytically research this important field and to be able to compare and transfer knowledge, ideas and examples of good practices among different countries. Lectures that conducted lecturers during IP provided expert knowledge on the topic. Workshops and fieldworks for students enabled students contribution and encouraged their active involvement. Organized social and physical activities with the elderly and students of nursing were implemented to socialize and to enable students to promote healthy lifestyle of the elderly and transfer knowledge about healthy lifestyle. Project outputs and results had an impact on raised awareness on this thematic filed, strengthened partnership of partner institutions, quality of learning, greater international mobility of students and lecturers, greater opportunities for students of nursing. The main outputs and results of the project are: Web portal, five new optional subjects offered at each partner institution, recommendation for future work in this field, guidelines for ethical care for the elderly, guidelines for development of new programmes for healthy lifestyle of the elderly, DVD with recorded physical activity for the elderly (with recommendations and instructions). A lot of effort was devoted to evaluate the project and its results and as well to dissemination activities with which we tried to reach as many member of target gropus as possible. And moreover we made an effort to disseminate the results to local government and general public to raise awareness among people at a greater scale. We aimed that the project produced and offered long term benefits such as recommendations for future work in this field, newly developed guidelines, new optional subjects and Web portal.

"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."

All undergraduate study programmes in the nursing field in European Union must be developed according to the EU directive (2005/36/EC amended by directive 2013/55/EU) and European Federation of Nurses Associations (EFN) Competency Framework, which demand that the half of all contacts hours of each nursing study programme are done in the clinical environments as clinical practice and mentored by the clinical mentors. So, the clinical practice is a key environment for developing the clinical competences. Even of the fact, that the clinical practice lead by the clinical mentors is of such great importance, structured and well planned clinical mentor’s education was still greatly lacking in nursing education. There was a lack of programs to educate clinical mentors for tackling the mentors role and the unified mentors course was of a great need as quality mentoring has significant effect upon student learning outcomesThe project “Quality mentorship for developing competent nursing students” is offering a systematic approach to tackle this issue with developing high quality Course of advanced mentorship competences. To assure the systematic approach, we developed Clinical mentors’ competence model which provides new knowledge and findings regarding current situation of clinical mentoring in nursing study programmes in Europe. The model introduces the most important concepts that were also integrated and used as a base to prepare Course of advanced mentorship competences as another intellectual output of the project. The third intellectual output of the project - Mentoring guidelines - offers a clear and simple instructions to be used in the daily clinical practice of mentoring. Both the Course of advanced mentoring competences and Mentoring guidelines were translated in all official EU languages. In this way, we assured that their use could be widespread across EU and broader. The most important participants of the project were clinical mentors in clinical environment. They were included in most of the project activities mainly for the purpose of the developing the Course of advanced mentorship competences. They participated in testing of the course by attending it and then implement the gained knowledge and skills into the mentoring process. Their contribution was very important also in the evaluation of the course itself. Altogether 250 clinical mentors took part. Very important participants were also teachers, researcher and experts from partner organisation. They were a part of most of the activities that were implemented during the project while developing outputs and results eg. literature review, research findings, analysing, developing the syllabus and curriculum of the course, ect.Implemented methodology, activities and the project results assured systematic approach to improve current situation in clinical mentors education and has an impact on greater clinical mentors competence. It also raised awareness about the need of high qualified nurses working as mentors in clinical environments. It also gives long term benefits as we aim that even after the project ends the developed Course of advanced mentorship competences, materials and Mentoring guideline will stay in use at HE institutions in nursing science and clinical environments across Europe and in this way contribute that unified mentors course will be available in all EU countries. European Federation of Nurses (EFN), as a partner of the project assured that the results of the project were spread and will be in use in the European countries which EFN represents (36 countries).

Already in 2003 the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (2003) and lately scientists from London`s Global University (2011) noticed, that the cultural diversity will be one of the most important factor in health-care area. Due to this, it is important to equip medical personnel with proper cultural competencies. As an answer to the above needs, the MICE-ICU project aimed at improving the knowledge, skills and cultural competencies of nurses working in intensive care units (ICUs). The MICE-ICU project was developed to improve knowledge, skills and competencies of ICU nurses in cultural sensitive care by developing and providing online access to a specialist, multicultural course for ICU nurses. The partnership started from the initiative of Polish Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Nurses (PTPAiIO). PTPAiIO and two higher education institutions: the College of Nursing in Celje from Slovenia and the University of Ostrava from Czech Republic engaged scientific experts in order to prepare proper methodological approach to achieve the objectives of the project. The high quality of the project results and the effectiveness of dissemination were ensured by the European federation of Critical Care Nursing associations (EfCCNa) - who is a European network and umbrella organisation for national associations of intensive/critical care nurses. EfCCNa consists of 28 national European critical care nursing associations, and represents more than 25 000 critical care nurses in Europe. The strategic partnership was supported by Danmar Computers Lld., who became the technical partner, responsible for preparing e-learning platform, MICE-ICU web site and other IT solutions. Finally the assist GmbH from Germany joined the partnership and offered expertise in training international soft skills as well as train-the-trainer training. All partners, except for Danmar Computers Lld. and assist GmbH acted as experts in the intensive nursing care. Despite the differences in the nature of main activities of the each partner, all of them contributed to the final outcomes of the MICE project. Main activities conducted during the project include: Literature review and ICU nurses training needs analysis – the systematic literature review was conducted by researchers from Poland, Slovenia and Czech Republic in order to identify nurses educational needs related to multicultural care in ICU in participating countries. Additionally the survey technique was used to identify actual cultural competences level of ICU nurses. The Healthcare Provider Cultural Competence Instrument (HPCCI) developed by Schwarz i in. (2015) was used for this purpose. In total 598 ICU nurses participated in this study including 155 nurses (25.92%) from Poland (PL), 218 (36.45%) from Czech Republic CZ), 97 (16.22%) from Slovenia (SI) and 128 (21.40%) from 20 European countries like Sweden, Izrael, Finland, Denmark. The results of literature review and training needs analysis formed the basis for developing the course curriculum and content. 1.The course was developed in cooperation between all partners and implemented on-line as e-learning course. It was agreed that the course will consist of three modules: Module I: Cultural awareness and sensitivity, Module II: Culturally diverse patients in health care environment, Module III: Specifics when caring for culturally diverse patients on ICU. The course starts with entry test of knowledge and ends with ending test. Topics prepared by the individual partner were reviewed by other partners, further developed or modified and finally the preliminary version of the course content was agreed. The course was translated into Polish, Czech and Slovenian languages. Danmar Computers Lld. implemented the course online and provided access to the testing platform. 2.Testing phase involved nurses from PL, CZ, SI and a few European countries, who took the e-learning course and answered questionnaires regarding usability, effectiveness and provided other suggestion to improve course quality. 3.The final version of the online course on multicultural care for ICU nurses was presented to EfCCNa council members and the join decision to recommend this course for ICU nurses all over the Europe was stated. The MICE-ICU project resulted in a specialized and accredited e-learning course on multicultural care dedicated to nurses working in intensive care environments. Besides main intellectual outputs, the multiplier events in all partner countries and the international Symposium on Multicultural Care were organized. The impact of MICE ICU project is expected on national and the European levels which assure long-term benefits in the shape of better qualified ICU nurses ready for caring for culturally dissimilar patients. If relevant, longer-term benefits. As the result, the ICU Nurses will increase their vocational competencies and receive a practical tool for work with patients from different cultures.