Luís Batalha and Jorge Apóstolo (in the photo), professors at the Nursing School of Coimbra (ESEnfC), are participating in a European project that uses 360º video as a learning tool for students and professionals to develop communication skills in pediatric health care.
This project, co-funded by the European Union, will allow students (from disciplines such as Nursing, Medicine, and Psychology) to acquire and train communication skills from scenarios recorded and co-constructed collaboratively with caregivers, children, and parents, focusing on the specificities of young children (age, psychomotor and cognitive development).
This pedagogical tool will be an integral part of a hybrid teaching system - with moments of face-to-face contact and others through a digital learning platform - that is being built by a group of five European institutions, in which the ESEnfC and its Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing (UICISA: E) are included.
Led by the Paramedical Department of the Haute Ecole Libre Mosane (Belgium), the project - SIMUCARE-Immersion - 360° immersion with the partner patient to apply the concepts of communication skills in pediatrics in initial training in the medical and paramedical areas - involves the partnership of three other higher education institutions: the Faculty of Medicine of the University Côte D'Azur (France), the Faculty of Psychology, Speech and Language Therapy and Education Sciences of the University of Liège (in Belgium), and the Iuliu Hatieganu Cluj-Napoca University of Medicine and Pharmacy (Romania).
The SIMUCARE-Immersion project “focuses on a little described and studied simulation tool, the 360° video”, but that “is particularly suitable to involve students in professional situations close to reality, enabling an experience that will develop verbal and non-verbal communication skills, such as posture, empathy, assertiveness, and reflexivity,” says researcher Luís Batalha, who coordinates the School’s participation in this initiative.
According to Luís Batalha, a specialist in Child Health and Pediatric Nursing, the project follows “the trend of integrating the patients in health care teams” and “in higher education, involving the patient as a partner in research and in the co-construction of learning activities”. This involvement “will improve population health and create more humanistic teaching environments”, concludes the ESEnfC researcher.
The three-year project (to be completed in 2025) is co-funded by the European Union through the Erasmus + program.
[2022-10-28]
