More than any other sector the health care sector is already today dependent on the mobility of workers from across Europe and even on an international scale in order to overcome skill shortages that are strongly influencing this sector in EU Member States. So far the mobility of skilled workers is strongly hindered by highly complex and time consuming validation and recognition processes and by missing transparency among health care qualifications in the European Member States. HCEU makes a major contribution towards transparency of health care qualifications across borders and facilitates processes to formally recognise and validate health care qualifications acquired abroad as well as through in- and non-formal learning within different health care recognition and validation systems in the European Union. For this purpose the HCEU consortium makes use of the highly awarded and already in many cases practically applied VQTS model. The VQTS model does not focus on the specificities of national VET systems but uses learning outcomes and work processes to enhance transparency. It provides a ‘common language’ to describe competences and their acquisition and a way to relate these competence descriptions to concrete qualifications/ certificates and competence profiles of individuals. The VQTS model relates on the one hand to the work process and follows on the other hand a ‘development logical’ differentiation of a competence profile. This makes it an ideal and comprehensive tool to appreciate the lifelong learning of health care professionals in the context of formal recognition processes. Based on this approach HCEU develops VQTS matrices, profiles, tools and instruments for the health care profiles ‘nurse’ and ‘carer for the elderly’ for the national contexts of the project partners and in order to facilitate recognition praxis in between those European Member States. In addition HCEU develops transfer kits in order to facilitate the transfer of those tools also to other national (within and beyond Europe) contexts and to other fields within health care. Those tools are expected to make a major contribution to the work of VET providers and recognition bodies/authorities involved in transnational mobility of health care professionals. In this way HCEU facilitates the establishment of a European labour market that helps to overcome skill shortages and high unemployment rates through fostering mobility of health care professionals across the European Member States
More than any other sector, today’s health care sector is dependent on the mobility of workers from across Europe and even on an international scale in order to overcome skill shortages within the EU Member States. The mobility of skilled workers is strongly hindered by highly complex and time consuming validation and recognition processes and by a lack of transparency among health care qualifications in the European Member States. The HCEU Project has made a major contribution towards the transparency of health care qualifications across borders and the facilitation of processes to formally recognise and validate health care qualifications acquired abroad as well as through in- and non-formal learning within different health care recognition and validation systems throughout the European Union. For this purpose the HCEU consortium made use of the award-winning, practically-applied VQTS model. The VQTS model does not focus on the specificities of national VET systems but uses learning outcomes and work processes to enhance transparency. It provides a ‘common language’ to describe competences and their acquisition and a way to relate these competence descriptions to concrete qualifications/ certificates and competence profiles of individuals. The VQTS model relates on the one hand to the work process and follows, on the other hand, a ‘development logical’ differentiation of a competence profile. This makes it an ideal and comprehensive tool to appreciate the lifelong learning of health care professionals in the context of formal recognition processes. Based on this approach HCEU developed VQTS matrices, profiles, tools and instruments for the field of ‘professional care’ for the national contexts of the project partners in order to facilitate recognition praxis in those EU Member States. In addition HCEU developed transfer kits in order to facilitate the transfer of those tools also to other national (within and beyond Europe) contexts and to other fields within health care. Those tools are expected to make a major contribution to the work of VET providers and recognition bodies/authorities involved in transnational mobility of health care professionals. In this way HCEU makes it possible to facilitate the establishment of a European labour market that helps to overcome skill shortages and high unemployment rates through fostering the mobility of health care professionals across the European Member States.