Opportunities for professional development in below the knee vascular disease (BTK-VD)
Project number: 2015-1-RO01-KA202-015210
Implementation period: 2015 – 2017
The aim of the project was to develop a model for lifelong learning across vascular surgery in the EU by involving practitioners from 4 countries in creating new protocol, new training and training tools and experience them in a multicultural challenging project-based context, in their working context and outreaching to colleagues into daily interaction. In the end we developed a group of “surgical change agents” ready to promote lifelong learning as an essential skill to any surgeon.
In our BTK-VD project we had an absolutely innovative idea of bringing together the professional training of surgeons in specific techniques, and the lifelong learning training of these professionals in instrumenting them on-line training, international cooperation, working in a common foreign language, exchange of experience and preparation for being mobile in Europe. In our project we developed a curricula with training materials, a learning platform and we organized short staff trainings to develop a new surgical protocol, bringing new techniques to staff not used in implementing them.
Lifelong learning is a concept taken up by governments and educational institutions worldwide to acknowledge the need for continuous learning irrespective of the profession. In the context of medicine, lifelong learning has always been formally considered an ethical obligation of doctors although the term Continuing Medical Education (CME) is more commonly used than Continuous Professional Development (CPD). BTK-VD project highlighted exactly the need of this focus, not just medical knowledges to be updated, but the professional approach of lifelong learning.
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