<< Background >>Surgery is one of the fields of medicine where professionals are heavily relying on dexterity and practical application of specialised skill sets during various procedures. Many of such can only be learned via practical experience. The students of medicine undergo phases where they learn the theory of such procedures, then those who are following the path of surgery specialisation observe and assist during surgical procedures and finally, when deemed experienced enough, they may perform the procedures themselves. With each opportunity to practice their surgical skills, the students as well as practicing surgeons gain confidence and experience; more so if they have opportunities to practice outside of the operating rooms on simulators and cadaveric material prior to practicing the procedures on their patients. Surgery Collaborative and Long-term Practical Experience Learning (SCaLPEL) project proposal aims to bring international opportunities for practical hands-on training of surgical skills to postgraduate (PG) students as well as academics from the field of surgery connecting the students and academics from across four institutions - Masaryk University (Czech Republic), University of Zagreb (Croatia), Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan with the Medical faculty set in Rome (Italy), Poznan University of Medical Sciences (Poland).To survey the level of satisfaction with and demand for practical surgical training opportunities, a questionnaire was distributed to PG students specialising in the field of surgery, and practicing surgeons who are academics at the same time. The outcomes of the questionnaire identified the following demands of the target groups: - PG students expressed a demand for more opportunities to participate in surgical courses and hands-on training due to unsatisfactory number of hours in students’ curricula.- All groups showed some need for international opportunities to gain and practice specialised surgical skills.- All groups expressed a demand for more opportunities to practice new surgical procedures on cadaveric material. - All groups expressed a demand for opportunities to train current surgical procedures and exchange the knowledge about current trends in specialised surgical procedures on an international level.- The last target group which was not identified via a questionnaire but through the conversation with partner institutions are the non-surgeon academics - anatomists from the Anatomy Department at the University of Zagreb. The department has only recently moved back to using cadaveric material in medical education of students but would like to develop their curriculum further and design specialised surgical cadaveric courses. The department is not equipped for setting up the courses and their academics have expressed an interest in observing how such courses are set up at Masaryk University so they could develop a plan to plan such courses in future.<< Objectives >>Aims of the project: -To exchange surgical knowledge, experience, and practical skills at the level of PG students and academics. - To enhance surgical skill of PG students from the field of surgery via international internships of PG students from the field of surgery where they will be able to observe and assist with specialised surgical procedures under the mentorship of world-renown experienced surgeons. - To increase the expertise of European surgeons. - To support early international collaborations by networking opportunities and activities of PG students where they will share and exchange their knowledge and experience. - To provide inspiration and support for setting up surgical cadaveric courses at other institution’s anatomical department (University of Zagreb) which would offer further opportunities for training of surgeons in a long run.<< Implementation >>PROJECT RESULTS:O1: Video recordings of clinical anatomy lectures, live surgical procedures, training of surgical proceduresO2: Case study materialsLEARNING/TEACHING/TRAINING ACTIVITIESC1 - C3: Blended summer schools of surgeryC4 - C15: Short surgical courses + internshipsC16 - C18: InternshipsMULTIPLIER EVENTSE1 - E5: International conferences<< Results >>- Videos of the real-case surgical procedures from the field of neurosurgery, plastic surgery, spondylosurgery, and gastrointestinal surgery available at the institutional repositories of all partner institutions to be accessed by the students and academics. - Videos of the training surgical procedures from the field of neurosurgery, plastic surgery, spondylosurgery, and gastrointestinal surgery undertaken during the summer school of surgery available at the institutional repositories of all partner institutions to be accessed by the students and academics. - Case reports and materials related to them (images, documentation) pertaining to cases from the fields of neurosurgery, plastic surgery, spondylosurgery, and gastrointestinal surgery available at the institutional repositories of all partner institutions to be accessed by the students and academics. - Working sheets and materials related to surgical practice in simulation centre of the Masaryk University available at the institutional repositories of all partner institutions to be accessed by the students and academics.- Recordings of presentations of the underlying clinical anatomy theory complementary to the techniques and procedures undertaken during the surgical training summer school and short training courses.

"The project entitled ""European e-manual for laryngeal surgery - medical e-university based on surgical video footage"" aims to create an innovative European e-book of laryngeal surgery, i.e. a collection of video recordings from live surgery sessions, creating a textbook of laryngeal surgery available online for free, for medical students and doctors from Europe and the whole world. It will be a kind of medical e-university based on video broadcasts of procedures and their recordings. Within the project, an Internet platform will be created which will enable conducting live sessions of surgery, gathering recordings of those sessions, as well as dividing those recordings into chapters and describing them, thus modelling the educational process. The project will include a series of live transmissions of surgery conducted by professors of medical universities in Poland, Germany and Spain, whose recordings will be published online in the form of a manual.The project’s target group are students of medical universities and doctors, not only involved in the project, but from all over the world. The open character and open access to the created materials will allow the audience to learn from the best professors anytime, anywhere.The results of the project will be the creation of an e-book of laryngeal surgery, available openly and free of charge for doctors and medical students. The hard results of the project will be:creation of an Internet platform that will enable live surgery sessions and recording of procedures, which will make it possible to create a meritorical description and publication of materials.creation of an e-manual of laryngeal surgery, i.e. a series of recordings of procedures, which are a compendium of knowledge in the field of laryngeal surgeryThe e-manual will contain 8-9 chapters on individual surgical techniques. Chapter 1 is a set of 6-10 basic operations of laryngoscopy (collection of samples, mapping). Chapter 2 is a set of 10-30 classical phonosurgery surgeries. Chapter 3 is a collection of a laser phonosurgery operations. The following chapters will contain about 10 films on the subjects of: (4) endoscopic surgery of epiglottis and (5) glottis, dysphagia cancers (6), open laryngoplastic surgery (7) and laryngeal cancers (8).Chapter 9 will be a unique collection of surgical procedures, difficult to assign to other categories. It is estimated that in the course of the project, about 100 educational materials will be published on the platform. After the end of the project, further recordings will be made to supplement the handbook as new operating methods are developed. Further laryngological clinics are also planned to join in order to broaden the potential and increase the number of demonstration surgeries. It is also planned to extend the platform and prepare e-manuals from other areas of surgery. The project will also develop statistical reports on the use of the e-manuals, showing the number of views of a given surgery or the geographical distribution of viewers. It should be emphasized that the proposed solution is innovative on a global scale, as the result will be a ""living"" manual, which will be supplemented with new recordings and new operating methods after the end of the project. We decided to implement the project in an international consortium, so that the educational materials would come from the best specialists in a given surgical method. Our target group is also international, which, coupled with free online availability, eliminates barriers in the access to knowledge, levels the playing field and raises the level of professionalism of future laryngology specialists."

InfPrev4frica project aims to capacitate Nursing HEIs from SSA, to facilitate the development nursing students competences in healthcare-associated infections prevention and control, in response to the need to improve the quality of healthcare in this area, increasing its safety and effectiveness, one of the world-wide health priorities that gains special importance in this African region. Intervening on education process of the future professionals simultaneously strengthening the link between the academy and present professionals, this project proposes to improve the quality of HE in SSA, enhancing its relevance for the labor market and society, in line with their competences and skills level and potential. To this, an innovative nursing curricula, focused on infection prevention and control, innovating in contents selection and approach, learning objectives and on the improvement of partner's teaching/learning pedagogical methods/tools, will allow the development of high level thinking competences, arising nursing students’ innovative and entrepreneurial spirit. Aligned with the undeniable fact that education of health professionals’ design involves the accordance with the health needs of the society where care is provided, the main outcome of this project is an innovative pedagogical model that formally addresses this scopus in SSA cultural and healthcare reality, as for patient safety to result in safe practice and improved patient outcomes, it has to be meaningful to the students. To achieve this Model, along with innovative methods and tools, namely in simulation-based learning, the project main activities are the design, piloting, evaluating and implementing the InfPrev4frica Model and Simulation Scenarios, resulting in InfPrev4frica E-book. Up to 70 nursing professors, 200 nurses/healthcare stakeholders and 1200 nursing students will be introduce into this new pedagogical conceptions, that will continue to be disseminated by InovSafeCare Community in SSA.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the most common psychiatric disease worldwide, with a huge socio-economic impact. Pharmacotherapy represents the first-line treatment choice; however, only about one third of patients respond to the first trial and about 30% are classified as treatment-resistant (TRD). TRD is associated with specific clinical features and genetic/gene expression signatures. To date, single sets of markers have shown limited power in response prediction. The aim of this project is the development of a precision medicine algorithm that would help early detection of non-responder patients, who might be more prone to later develop TRD. To address this, aim the project will be organized in 2 phases. Phase 1 will involve 300 patients with MDD already recruited, comprising 150 TRD and 150 responders, considered as extreme phenotypes of response. An accurate clinical stratification will be performed for all patients; moreover, a genomic, transcriptomic and miRNomic profiling will be conducted. The data generated will be exploited to develop an innovative algorithm integrating clinical, omics and gender data, in order to predict treatment response and TRD development. In phase 2, a new naturalistic cohort of 300 MDD patients will be recruited to assess, in real-world conditions, the capability of the algorithm to correctly predict the treatment outcomes. Moreover, in this phase an active participation and advocacy of patients will be established as a critical component for successful consideration of patients' perspective and needs on the use of predictive tools for MDD treatment. This project represents a proof-of-concept study. The obtained results will provide information about the feasibility and usefulness of the proposed approach, with the perspective of designing future clinical trials in which algorithms could be tested as a predictive tool to drive decision making by clinicians, enabling a better prevention and management of MDD resistance.