Background The Physiotherapy and Refugees Education Project (PREP) addresses the mismatch between the competence of physiotherapists (PTs) and the complex rehabilitation needs of a growing population of refugees and migrants in Europe. Over 1 million refugees and migrants have crossed the borders to Europe in recent years. This migration represents a major challenge for health care systems that struggle to provide healthcare services, particularly for non-communicable diseases and disability. Refugees and migrants have complex health needs that are a result of a cumulative trauma experienced in their home countries, during their dangerous journey, or in the period of adjustment in their new country. This diverse and non-homogenous group also comes with resources in terms of resilience that we need to learn from and use in the healing process. However, they also face barriers accessing healthcare services because of language and cultural differences, differences in socio-economic status, and a lack of familiarity with local environment and healthcare system. There is a gap in competence of health care professionals, including PTs, to meet their complex needs, many of which can be addressed by physiotherapy. There is a clear lack of definition regarding PTs competencies needed to serve refugees and migrants, and a lack of common strategies to address challenges of migration which has negative implications for health. Project objectives PREP aims to build competencies of PTs working in rehabilitation services for refugees and migrants by establishing core competencies for effectively serving this population, and by launching an open online course to bring to scale the identified competencies to a larger audience. Project participants The project involves around 20 key informants (PTs and refugees) for the identification of core competencies as background for the consensus process. Stakeholders with particular knowledge in this field, participate in the Delphi survey to reach consensus. 150 PTs participate in and evaluate the course “Physiotherapy in rehabilitation services for refugees and immigrants”. Following evaluation, the course will be revised and made freely available. Stakeholders are invited to attend the multiplier events. Project activities All project activities will be implemented in a step-by-step approach starting with identification and building international consensus on core PT competencies for rehabilitation for refugees and migrants. Identification of a set of core competencies, established through a scoping review, interviews with key informants, and consensus building, will result in a report describing core PT competencies for rehabilitation of refugees and migrants. Once the competencies are identified, a curriculum is developed. Guided by the curriculum, we design and implement an open online course. The online course will be developed collaboratively in a series of design and production workshops, and piloted with up to 150 learners recruited by partners from five different countries. Four multiplier events will be used to disseminate results and share the lessons learned beyond this partnership. Methodology The project implementation methodology is based on collaboration between five partners from higher education, health and non-governmental sectors from six countries. The PREP methodology is built on the strengths of each partner. The principles of agile project management and learning design will be used to implement the project activities, as it is a dynamic, incremental, iterative, and collaborative approach to flexibly respond to the needs that emerge in the project implementation. Results The project activities will result in a report describing core competencies for PTs needed to deliver rehabilitation service for refugees and migrants. Curriculum describing themes and learning outcomes accessible for other institutions. An online course on physiotherapy services for refugees and migrants incorporating audiovisual materials consisting of up to 10 modules. A freely accessible online course that builds competencies of PTs for working with refugees and migrants, and increased capacity of up to 150 physiotherapists to meet the rehabilitation needs of refugees and migrants. Impact It is expected that the project will have multiple long term impacts on 1) competency development among practicing and future PTs by creating open online educational resource for PTs that will be freely available after the completion of the project; 2) health human resource management and development by allowing managers to base their planning and training decisions on the core PT competencies for rehabilitation of refugees and migrants identified in this project, and 3) services provided to this population by better trained PTs.
Background The Physiotherapy and Refugees Education Project (PREP) addressed the mismatch between the competence of physiotherapists (PTs) and the complex rehabilitation needs of a growing population of refugees and migrants in Europe. Project objectives PREP aimed to build competencies of PTs working in rehabilitation services for refugees and migrants. This aim was reached by four objectives: 1) establishing core competencies for physiotherapists working with refugees, 2) preparing a curriculum, 3) designing and producing a digital course and 4) pilot, evaluate and revise the digital course. Project participants The project involved around 30 key informants (PTs, refugees and decission makers) and 8 spcialists for the identification of core competencie. The digital course was open for 150 participants, and we accepted151 for participation. The course is now open availbale for download at the canvas commons platform, meaning that all educational institutions using this platform can use the coruse in their educational programs. It is also open for participation via signing up (no fee). The course content is also given as a E-book (PREP E-book) that has been spread through our channels and also placed on our webside (https://prosjekt.hvl.no/prep/) and on the Erasmus results platform. Project activities and results The first step in the process was to write a scoping review on published research and experiences, to be able to identify knowledge gaps. This made a basis for interviews with key stakeholders (physiotehrapists, refugees and decisiion makers) in Norway, Sweden and The Netherlands, and for a consensus process involving a global group of specialists within physiotherapy and refugee health. These three activities made the basis for the IO1 main output, the consensus report. The consensus report was used to build a curriculum (IO2), that we used to design the didgital course (IO3). In addition, such a curriculum can be used by other institutuions to build own coruses, or to implement part of this curriculum in their own ongoing courses. In IO3 we designed and produced a digital course correseponding to 5ECTS on master degree level. This production inlcuded a international collaborative project where stakeholders on a global level was invited to share their knowledge and experiences. This was done to ensure relevance in the course and to ensure that we were updated on current discussions and global issues. The final stage of the project (IO4) was to pilot, evaluate and revise the course (IO4). We aimed at 150 participants, and closed the sign up at 151. Some course participants took the entire course and received a certificate, others took parts of it. During the project period we had monthly, digital meetings. During these meetings, we could update each other on the work, discuss issues on the way and keep track of the project. We planned for 6 transnational physical meetings, and managed to have 3 of these before covid-19 restrictions. The last meetings were digital, except for part 2 of the final meeting that was hybrid. We disseminated the project and our results during the entire project period and used social media, own channels, conferences and local and international meetings for this purpose. Impact Our aim was to create a course to give physiotherapists the possibility to build competence in working with refugees. This also included building a network for working with refugee health. The project had a direct impact on the participants in the course, the stakeholders providing information and experiences and on the project group, builidng competence and providing a platform for further collaborations. The network has grown larger than we expected it would, and we ended up having a high number of collaborative organisations, institutions, individuals and other projects. Although the official project ended in 2021, the project is still active. We have bachelor and master students working on the project, we have spin off projects and we used the project and network actively within our educations, This autumn, new organisations joined as collaborative partners with the aim to collaborate on bachelor theses. The PREP project has become an integrated part within our educational institutions. 4 spin-off projects can be mentioned: 1) A course in using interpreters in Norway. This was initiated by other organisations, and PREP was invited to join. The course is now used at several educational institutions in Norway. 2) Project on torture survivors. This started because of the PREP project and is now active with bachelor- and master students and research. 3) PREP IP, this is a direct continuation of PREP, where we aim to develop further for an interprofessional group. 4) HEQED, which is a project where we aim tp understand health equity and how to operationalise this within our educations. All these projects are based on the PREP network and beyond.