The demands of the European nursing and medical sector to highly qualified nurses is indispensable. Professional Nursing Education and Training (Acronym: PRO-NURSING) is aimed at bridging between tasks, knowledge domain and curriculums of nursing across Germany, which could be a benchmark for other European states. The triple attributes of nursing (task↔ knowledge ↔ curriculum) will be considered dynamically by incorporating evidences of changes with respect to existing standards and protocols of nursing. The entire system will be developed as a web-based application with the ontological back-end. This is innovative especially for supporting nursing educators and medical supervisors to include variation in performing care and treatment, and preserving quality of nursing care in the clinics and hospitals in a long run. In particular, the objectives of PRO-NURSING are: 1. Systematic job analysis of nurses, particularly for job holders as the target group, i.e. establishing a structure for defining and assessing performance. 2. Developing a standard (reference) nursing process model for identifying responsibilities, tasks and required knowledge domains of basic nursing in association with medical processes in hospitals, i.e. to set up a common process model that contains specific nursing general processes and within the processes, general protocols are linked to tasks and activities. 3. Systematic curriculum analysis with regard to existing curriculums in Federal Republic of Germany, and mapping them to nursing knowledge domain and tasks. The project consortium consists of four partners with managerial, technical and clinical expertise and capacities, namely: • University of Siegen – Institute of Knowledge Based Systems (USIEGEN), Siegen, Germany Coordinator of the project with expertise in Knowledge Management, Knowledge Based Systems, Software Development and Medical Informatics • University of Amsterdam (UvA) – the Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour (HRM-OB) section of the Amsterdam Business School, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Full partner of the project with expertise in Human Resource Management, Personnel selection, Job knowledge assessment • Beta Klinik GmbH, Bonn, Germany Full partner of the project with expertise in Medical and nursing,and Vocational education and training • Netpositive Ltd. , Budapest, Hungary Full partner of the project with expertise in IT, Process management, Document Management, System Integration, SOA (service-oriented architecture), Knowledge Base Development In addition, the partnership will subcontract FIVAN Center of Neurological Rehabilitation to monitor the project management and validate quality of intellectual outcomes. FIVAN possess dual technical and clinical functionalities with over 15 years’ experience in developing innovative ICT solutions for promoting education of care-givers and nurses. The core intellectual outcomes of the project are: Nursing Tasks Ontology (O1), Nursing Curriculum Ontology (O2), and PRO-NURSING System (Web-based Application) (O3). The intellectual outcomes are realized based on proper implementation of their subset activities. In order to reach project stakeholders and public audience, and to disseminate the project’s intellectual outcomes, the consortium will organize a one-day seminar in Beta Klinik, Bonn. The project will deploy multiple methodologies for project management and coordination, quality management, literature survey, analysis of databases, nursing job analysis, nursing curriculum analysis, nursing process modeling, ontology engineering, software process models (requirements analysis, design, development, integration and testing) as well as usability and pilot-testing. In addition the systematic dissemination and exploitation activities are considered as the key factors for the project success and sustaining the project intellectual outcomes in a long-run. Last but not least, the expected long term benefits of the project at the local, regional, national and European/international level can be foreseen as: • Supporting nursing schools and authorities in local, regional and national level for bridging the gap between labor market requirements and learning contents provided in nursing curriculums and studying programs • Promoting use of ICT approaches in nursing education and training in all levels of students, job applicant and employed nurses, particularly in the German nursing sector • Fostering HRM in the European and international nursing sectors • Providing a benchmark for combining the analyses of task, knowledge domain and curriculums in a unified framework for European and international nursing sectors
Work-oriented education and training has a considerable impact on improving the performance of nurses, and detecting and compensating existing gaps in the nursing knowledge domain. The stakeholders in this process at various levels are nursing students, nurses, medical supervisors, human resource managers, employers, and educators. Employing Information Technology (IT) solutions can be expected to contribute to the continuous improvement of work-based education and training processes, and may ultimately enhance the quality of learning outcomes. Such a system should not only comprise the systematic assessment of knowledge domains in compliance with standard curricula and the provision of learning contents, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it should ensure a match with the requirements, including knowledge elements, of identified nursing tasks and associated processes. In light of these developments, Pro-Nursing was aimed at three main objectives; i) bridging between nursing tasks and nursing knowledge to represent their interrelationship to the different target groups, ii) assessing knowledge levels of nurses and recommending appropriate learning materials to improve the detected knowledge gaps, and iii) monitoring the knowledge gaps of nurses who are working at hospitals. In order to realize these objectives, the Pro-Nursing web-based application, including its ontological back-end, was developed. The Pro-Nursing system, hence, supports nursing educators and supervisors to ensure the quality of nursing care in the clinics and hospitals in the long-run. With regard to the original project application, the intellectual outputs of the project are labelled: (O1) Nursing Process Ontology, including five activities, (O2) Nursing Domain Ontology, including four activities, and (O3) Pro-Nursing Web-based Application including eight activities. The intellectual outputs have been monitored and realized based on proper implementation of their subset activities. Moreover, In order to i) test the Pro-Nursing application, ii) receive the feedback of the end-users, iii) reach project stakeholders and the general public, and iv) disseminate the project’s results, the consortium organized a one-day symposium (E1) in Bonn. The Pro-Nursing symposium provided an international forum for researchers and practitioners in the field of vocational learning, technology enhanced learning, and particularly vocational education in the domain of health and nursing. The audience included representatives from seven EU-countries, namely, Austria, England, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Spain. Three speakers from three different disciplines of nursing education, VET and competence management delivered a keynote presentation. Moreover, eight selected papers and posters were presented by the authors. The presentations of the keynote speeches, presented papers, and posters are available on the Pro-Nursing homepage at www.pro-nursing.eu/web/download/show. Furthermore, the selected papers have been published in a book entitled "Professional Education and Training through Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation ", with ISBN: 978-3-936533-77-4. The online version of the book is accessible via the OPUS portal of the library of University of Siegen. The Pro-Nursing project has thus reached the expected impact at the local, regional, national and European/international level as described below. • The Pro-Nursing application provides the nursing taxonomy, the nursing task list and the task-knowledge matrix for supporting nursing schools and authorities at the local, regional, and national level towards bridging the gap between labor market requirements and learning contents provided in nursing curricula and study programs. • The Pro-Nursing application is an easy to use, accessible, web-based application which promotes the use of ICT in nursing education and training for all levels of students, job applicants, and employed nurses, particularly in the German nursing sector. • The Pro-Nursing project has provided an opportunity for HRM and job analysis staff to work on identify, analyze, and define nursing job. • Pro-Nursing has defined, adopted and deployed the methodologies of implementing the nursing task list, the nursing process model, the nursing task-knowledge matrix, and the evaluation of the results of the project. The methodologies are provided as a response to the need of a benchmark for combining the analyses of task, knowledge domain and curricula in a unified framework for European and international nursing sectors. To disseminate the project results and to further enlarge the network, the Pro-Nursing consortium established an associated partnership with five institutions, namely, Fivan from Spain, Concetra from England, Frenetti from the Netherlands, European Association for Practitioner Research on Improving Learning (EAPRIL) from Belgium, DEKRA Academie GmbH from Germany under HCEU project.