The European continent must face important socio-sanitary challenges along the 21th century. In this regard, gradual ageing of the EU population will be one of the most important social change agents in next years. It is partly due to the increment of life expectancy, although this trend is not accompanied by an increase of healthy life years. It is a fact that health problems affect elderly people to a greater extent, but in addition, current lifestyle is having important repercussions on health of younger people. Given all this, the expected increase of the population share in risk of suffering functional decline in next years is worrying, and so sustainability and efficiency of national health systems could be compromised. Moreover, scientific and technical advances achieved in the field of Functional Evaluation (FE) related to biomechanical methodologies have become a revolution in the way practitioners identify, treat and assess many of the syndromes and pathologies with highest impact on quality of life. Thus, FE is considered as a set of technologies, methodologies and knowledge which is adequate to face the current and future European socio-sanitary challenges. The goal of TEACH project is to encourage the transfer of innovation, generated in the health sciences field - specifically those related to Funtional Evaluation - to the curricula of the next generation of graduates in health sciences. The training provided now in the universities needs to be updated, completed and standarized by innovative skills suitable to face the needs related to health of the Europeans in next years. With this general purpose, a training course will be developed during the project. Teachers of health sciences schools will be the main target group of the course. Other target groups will be students from master studies and healthcare professionals whom would like to improve their skills. In the long term, if TEACH achieves the desired impact, patients will benefit of receiving more accurate diagnosis and improved treatments, and consequently, the national health systems will improve their sustainability and efficiency. TEACH consortium is composed by five organisations: -Two academic organizations: Silesian University of Technology (SUT, Poland) and Universidad de Valencia (UV, Spain). -A research centre: Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (IBV, Spain). -An association: The Association of Medical Schools in Europe (AMSE, Germany). This consortium has been set up to guarantee the success of the project and the future exploitation beyond the project end. TEACH partners are experts in the contents to be developed and they have access to current and future health sciences teachers and healthcare professionals across the European continent and capability to disseminate and to exploit the project results. In addition, they will explore the ECTS credit recognition and the introduction of TEACH outputs into formal education. The project will have a total duration of 24 months and it will be coordinated by SUT. Dual activities have been defined to tackle the development of TEACH project, supporting activities associated to the Project Management and Implementation and more technical activities associated to the production of the Intellectual Outputs of the project. TEACH has associated three intellectual outputs, all of them will be freely accessible to target users and also for general public interested on them: -Specification and design of the Curriculum. It will be an electronic document available at the public area of the project website. -Online course integrated in the online platform (pilot version). This output will include a set of different electronic documents that will be available at the project website, at the websites of the project partners and at the website of Erasmus+ programme. -Open online course: The course will be an open-access action that after the project end will be available as part of the training of project partners. TEACH will stimulate the creation of professional opportunities for teachers as it will improve the links and communication between universities, innovation sector, and health professionals. This project also will contribute to the professional retraining of teachers, by giving them new quality training contents, in line the needs of the European continent in health field. TEACH also intends to homogenize best practices among European healthcare professionals. This will mitigate differences between member countries and it will help them to share a common knowledge and methodologies to face common challenges.
The TEACH project has been conducted on the background of still relevant important socio-sanitary challenges along the 21th century that reflect following aspects: gradual ageing of the EU population; health problems affected elderly people to a greater extent; unhealthy lifestyle including sedentary lifestyle, sedentary working mode (that is especially visible within COVID 19 pandemic time) and so called Kinesiophobia. Improper lifestyle leads to mechanical overloads of the musculoskeletal system, followed by the formation of so-called pain syndromes, having negative repercussions on health of all people. In the same time a lack of European training standards of professionalization in the field of FE, ensuring maximum safety and high quality of therapies on the same level across Europe was the main context of undertaking the launch of TEACH project, that objective was to create an open, free of charge, international online training tool that could be the opportunity for health sciences students, teachers and professionals to gain comprehensive, holistic and up to date knowledge including theoretical and practical aspect of FE. Particularly, scientific and technical advances achieved in the field of FE related to biomechanical methodologies, advanced instrumented techniques and also social and mental contexts influencing on quality of life have become a revolution in the way practitioners identify, treat and assess many of the syndromes and pathologies with highest impact on daily living, wellbeing and people’s health. In order to prepare such interdisciplinary, comprehensive and effective training tool it was necessary to include participants those specializing in various areas of FE and education. Two of participants were academic: Silesian University of Technology (Poland) and Universidad de Valencia (Spain), one was research center: Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (Spain) and one association: The Association of Medical Schools in Europe (Germany). The various and exceptional research and education experience gave the opportunity to contribute the project course by all of them in the best possible ways. All of participants contributed each activity that make up the two Intellectual Outcomes (IO) in the project. The first IO was to transfer of innovation, related to FE to the curricula for the next generation of graduates in health sciences. Particularly the curriculum includes: Course aim, Total amount of teaching hours, Modules, Target group definitions, Prerequisites for participation, Academic tutors profiles, Pedagogical resources, The procedure of assessment and examination, Technical infrastructure; and 4 modules (including thematic units) were incorporated into the course: MODULE BIOMECHANICS: FOUNDATIONS OF BIOMECHANICS APPLIED TO THE LOCOMOTOR SYSTEM; MODULE FUNCTIONAL EVALUATION: CONCEPT AND METHODOLOGY; MODULE BIOMECHANICS OF SPINE; MODULE BIOMECHANICS OF GAIT. Particularly the modules for curriculum were formulated according to detected needs of potential stakeholders: focus group session (in Poland, Germany and Spain) and questionnaire (104 responses from 12 different countries). The second IO included preparation of TEACH training contents in four languages: English, Polish, Spanish and German and implementation of them to multi-language free e-learning course available on https://teach.ibv.org/. The structure of the course include: Introductory presentation on each unit (power point/video); Theory material for the teacher (pdf/video); Self-assessment test for teacher (pdf, doc); Teacher's manual including a scenario for student activities (pdf, doc); Presentation for teacher to use in class with students (power point); Practice assignment form for students (pdf, doc). The project result that is the on-line course was used and validated by international stakeholders including 319 users from 11 different countries and 4 different continents representing both teachers and students of health sciences schools. Such interest in the course (already at the pilot stage) indicates that the subject matter of the course is needed and reflects great impact on education and future generations of people who will be cared by and well-educated professionals. Thanks to ME, Dissemination activities, great interesting of the online course that is interdisciplinary, the TEACH project can be also treated as a tool for stimulating the creating opportunities for improving the communication between universities, innovation sector, and health professionals. The project also contributes to the professional retraining of teachers, by giving them new quality training contents, in line the needs of the European continent in health field. Finally TEACH intends to homogenize best practices among European healthcare professionals. Thank to this it is possible to mitigate differences between member countries and it helps them to share a common knowledge and methodologies to face common challenges.