This project allowed students to develop their language and gain multicultural experiences inside and outside of healthcare. Great leaps were made in terms of self-reliance, self-confidence and resilience. Through intensive contact with each other, their social skills were also strengthened. Students also learned how to handle care and resources efficiently and effectively. Students were also able to sharpen other principles towards care (technical nursing care, other role of family, other framing,...). The project brought new insights into principles from other cultures inside and outside of care. The project also contributed to the improvement of quality within our own school (the experiences of students and internships were evaluated and will be used to optimally prepare future domestic and foreign internship exchanges. The course and the evaluation of the whole project was also very useful for our own educational quest to adapt our functioning regarding internship and to come up with new ways of organizing workplace learning.
To inspire quality improvement in schools, Hivset resolutely chose lifelong learning within a European and international context. Based on the three major themes (now four), we are working on quality improvement on a European level by strengthening key competences of staff in dealing with diversity, quality assurance and innovation. This project addressed our major work themes with a strong emphasis on diversity. For 25 years we have been cooperating with the Romanian school "Scoala Postliceala Sanitara Arad", mainly on internship exchange. This school is very similar to our school compared to some other European schools within the domain of 'society and welfare' and delivers HBO5 nurses after a 3-year course of study. As a school we need to respond to the growing diversity and multiculturalism in healthcare. As a school, we try to encourage students to participate in international experiences. This exchange brings our students in contact with nursing students from Romania and in this way also with nursing/care in another culture, Romania.