<< Background >>The recent pandemic has speeded up the processes of adaptation of mHealth solutions, or the implementation of the digital tools in many healthcare and social care (HC&SC) areas, but it also uncovered several obstacles that exist on the demand side of it. It includes, among others lack of overall digital competencies and specific eHealth knowledge within the healthcare and social care workforce, as well as a lack of VET adaptation to the increasing sectoral needs. On top of that, between-country differences expose even more gaps in this respect. In some countries like Poland, or Romania, the digital transformation of HC&SC services is still severely underdeveloped, while other countries (like France) for almost a decade have national strategies implementing the process.As a result of the pandemic shocks for the HC&SC sectors, the majority of funds devoted to these sectors, are aimed at rebuilding the system, strengthening the basic services, preparing for future pandemic turbulences, and much fewer funds is being devoted to the reskilling and upskilling of the HC&SC workforce. Adapting the HC&SC workforce to the new digital reality is a key VET activity, especially now, with the implementation of the new digital care tools.The aim of this project is to address the needs of HC&SC workforce and to equip the VET system with innovative educational tools and materials, that can help and support digital transformation in the HC&SC sectors through securing digital readiness and resilience of their workforce.<< Objectives >>The e4CARE project’s aim is to provide a one-of-a-kind innovative didactic inventory, which will fill the EU and national gaps in terms of digital competence shortages among healthcare and social care professionals in innovating the care model. The objective of e4CARE is also to immediately respond to the new EC priorities with the NextGenerationEU strategy towards the stronger European Health Union. The concrete objectives are to:- identify and map the digital care tools being created (but not necessarily used) in the healthcare and social care services during the last couple of years;- Identify and list the digital skills needed for the effective use of the digital tools, as well as assess the skills gap of the healthcare workforce in this respect;- create an educational innovative tools that would secure and increase healthcare and social care (potential) workforces’ digital competencies;- provide an online space for local, regional, and national healthcare and social care stakeholders to exchange best practices, build knowledge, gain educational materials and increase their awareness in this respect;- to provide policymakers at the national and regional level with the solutions, best practices, and recommendations that can help them speed up the digitalization process of care provision more effectively without using unnecessary costs.<< Implementation >>Project ResultsPR1: e4CARE Training Hub will provide a well-structured approach to the progressive digitalisation of the healthcare (HC) and social care (SC) sector process covered by this project.PR2: e4CARE Didactic Inventory will answer the needs of the sector and stakeholders, by preparing a truly innovative Inventory, that will serve as a starting point for the preparation of training materials in the next part of the project.PR3: e4CARE Stock of e-learning materials is the sustainable response to the challenges presented in the first part of this proposal, and it will lead to the creation of the truly innovative stock of e-learning materials within the VET system to support HC&SC workforce in their daily activity.Each project result will contain testing and validation phases led by the project coordinator (AOA) and with the involvement of all partners.Multiplier Events1.How to speed up the process of healthcare and social care digitalisation in Poland? - e4Health solutions.2.Transforming health care and social care models for efficient digital absorption - e4CARE results.3.The influence of digitalization on health care and social care in Romania.4.Transforming health care and social care models for efficient digital absorption in Greece.5.Digital education in the field of health and social assistance, as a result of the Erasmus + e4CARE Project.Four project meetings are envisioned during the implementation of e4CARE.Meeting 1: the Kick-Off Meeting will be held in month 1 in Romania at the location of the Coordinator AOA. The purpose of the meeting is to ensure a shared vision of the project and a thorough consensus and understanding of PM tools and requirements (report format, costs tracking tools, internal communication procedures, relations with the Agency, etc)Meeting 2 in month 6 will be held in France at the premises of Aksantys in conjunction with the launch of PR2 so that partners are all on the same page and have a shared vision of the results of PR1 and a common approach towards PR2.Meeting 3 in month 12 will be held in Poland at the premises of CASE. The meeting will be held halfway through the implementation of PR3 so that partners can adjust the validation process depending on interim results.Meeting 4: Final Closing Meeting will be held in month 23 online or in Greece at the premises of IDEC. The final meeting will be held in month 23 to close the project and prepare for dissemination and valorisation activities for the 2 years after the end of the project and to develop future activities among partners.<< Results >>The e4CARE project is aimed at achieving significant learning outcomes, not only in terms of the tangible project results but also in terms of the intangible learning outcomes. It directly responds to the local and regional needs in the partnering countries, and indirectly to the EU4Health Program priorities.The tangible results are the direct outputs obtained from the project implementation, while intangible outcomes consist of the indirect outcomes obtained from the unique way the challenges are approached, the partnership is constructed, the project is implemented, and the results and information about the e4CARE results are promoted and shared.Tangible resultsResult 1: e4CARE Learning Hub: available in 5 languages (English, French, Greek, Polish, and Romanian). The Hub will (1) guarantee open and free access to all interested groups; (2) collect ALL the information and outputs from the project and present them in a user-friendly, easy to understand way; and (3) include new e-learning stock for policy-maker, as well as will constitute an interactive place of exchange of information.Result 2: e4CARE Didactic Inventory – Under this activity partners will map and present innovative digital tools being created (and not necessarily used) within healthcare and social care. The results will be gathered at the country and regional level and we will report the status quo of practices combined into one systemic online didactic inventory. The information will be used to set of the necessary digital skills for end-users of the healthcare sector and will serve as an element for the creation of the training materials in the Result 3.Result 3: e4CARE stock of e-learning materials, will be a truly innovative combination of didactic materials describing the functioning of the digital care tools, as well as fit-for-purposematerials teaching digital competencies needed for the effective usage of these tools. The catalogue of e-learning materials will combine most up-to-date courses about new digitalopportunities and tools used by healthcare and social care professionals.Additionally, e4CARE will produce a final Green policy paper to stimulate the debate around the necessity of innovating the healthcare and social care VET systems and processes.The other set of tangible results within e4CARE are:- Five Multiplier Events, where each of them will provide impact and sustainability of the project results for a broad range of stakeholders;- e4CARE Management Plan, that will be produced at the inception phase of the project;- e4CARE Promotion, sharing and effective use strategy, which is extremely relevant for this particular project due to a broad range of stakeholders willing to learn more about potential advantages of the digital transformation of care model.- e4CARE Quality Assurance plan.All the results are aimed to have a long-term sustainability effect on the healthcare and social care sectors, support systemic digital transformation, and be the first type of such a rich source of information and comprehensive e-learning courses in response to rapidly transforming economy and society.Intangible outcomes- 400 learners, whose digital competencies have been increased;- Augmented relevance of the VET transformation into more digital-oriented and innovative courses;- Enhanced professional path for VET adult students thanks to the networking effects of e4CARE project. It will establish working collaborations among organisations from different domains, sectors, and countries (IT sector, healthcare sectors stakeholders, public authorities);- Improved project management and intercultural communication competencies among the implementation teams of the partner organisations.

EUROPEAN OPERATING ROOM NURSES* ARE LACKING TRAINING AND ARE FACING PATIENT SAFETY ISSUES An operating room (OR) nurse works in a very special environment which is the operating theater. To simplify, she has two major functions as circulating nurse and scrub nurse. As a circulating nurse, she takes care of the patient and of everything in the OR. She is the link between the sterile team and coordinates the smooth running of the surgical program. As a scrub nurse, she assists the surgeon in the sterile area throughout the surgical procedure. Dressed in a sterile gown, she receives the sterile instrument trays, counts the instruments, arranges them on her table, etc.. She stands by the surgeon throughout the surgical procedure, which can last from 20 minutes to several hours. In order to do so, she hands to the surgeon the instruments or medical devices of all kinds needed. A good scrub nurse must anticipate the needs of the surgeon and understand what he is doing and must anticipate which instrument or medical device she will have to provide. The scrub nurse may also assist the surgeon during certain stages of the procedure. However, in most European countries, there is no compulsory training for OR nurses. If specialised training courses exists, it is not mandatory for a nurse to follow them before working in the OR !At the same time, patients are getting older, staff turnover is increasing, medical and technical innovations are becoming more and more advanced and frequent, the operating theatre environment is becoming more and more multicultural with more and more interim staff... Outpatient surgery requires fluid, fast and safe reactions. The tension among the OR staff is obvious. Integrating new nurses without training is a major challenge whereby patient safety issues are disregarded.In response to this existing situation, at the European level, the profession has set up two previous projects : KSM (Key Skill Management) and KSMOR (KSM in Operating Room).These two projects focus primarily on the CIRCULATING NURSE function. They provide OR managers with tools to manage the quality and practices of their teams thanks to an application that has been tested in about twenty establishments in Europe. The current project aims to complete and extend it also to the function of SCRUB NURSE.THE ANSWER: A MULTI-LANGUAGE TEACHING PLATFORM WITH VIDEOS ON THE PROFESSION OF CIRCULATING and SCRUB NURSE.The aim of the project is to provide a platform that allows any OR nurse to acquire the necessary practices to instrument and circulate in the OR environment. Teaching paths differentiated by surgical specialty and by instrument type, self-evaluation, versatility table, individual profiles, are all means that the OR manager or nurse can access to on the platform.PROFESSIONAL PARTNERS INVOLVED ON A DAILY BASIS IN THE FUNCTIONING OF OPERATING THEATRESThe coordinator of the project is a Belgian university college (Haute Ecole Vinci). Do also take part in the project : three universities training nurses (Fin, SW, CSR); a national association of OR nurses (GR) whose President is the Vice President of EORNA (European Operating Room Nurses Association); the designer of the KSM method (FR) and a technical partner for the videos (BE). Three professional groups representing the profession participate as associated partners: EORNA (Europe), AFISO (Belgium), UNAIBODE (France).A CAREFULLY PREPARED PROJECT BY OR NURSES FOR OR NURSESThe project was organized in the form of a network of processes, each led by a pilot and a co-pilot. All the activities were planned taking into account the improvement loops for each of the videos. The list of practices resulted from several months of preparatory work in order to have, from the start of the project, a non-exhaustive list of videos representing the essential function of the OR nurse.SCENARIOS DESIGNED BY OPERATING THEATRE PROFESSIONALS, PUT INTO IMAGES AND TESTED BY THE PROFESSION.All the videos are based on scenarios designed and validated by operating room staff with the advice of surgeons.Each scenario gives life to practices and gestures to which are added comments and realistic image processing.A UNIQUE EDUCATIONAL TOOL - TO SOOTHE AND FACILITATE THE INTEGRATION OF NEWCOMERS IN THE OR - TO MAKE THE SURGEONS AND NURSES WORK SAFER - TO IMPROVE PATIENT SAFETY. ANY OPERATING THEATRE IN THE WORLD CAN USE THE VIDEO CORPUS AND APPROPRIATE THE PLATFORM.* The term nurse is used in feminine gender for ease of spelling. While women represent 90-95% of the profession, nonetheless the profession remains open to men.