What is the IDEAL programme?

Partners: Université Paris Descartes (coordinator; FR), Università Cattolica del Sacre Cuore di Roma (IT) ; NHS Lothian (SCOT) ; Universiteit Antwerpen (BEL) ; Mother Kevin Postgraduate Medical School (OUG) ; St Mary’s Hospital Lacor (OUG).

IDEAL (Infectious Diseases teaching Europe/Africa Learning) project developed a joint international curriculum in Infectious Diseases in English for European undergraduate students and African students from Uganda and proposed an innovative curriculum targeting undergraduate students from Europe and African countries, delivered in English by a team of teachers combining expertise in pedagogy, infectious diseases, internal medicine, public health, microbiology, pathology and science.

IDEAL frontal lectures were combined with interactive seminars, clinical cases, tests and videos, to promote interactivity and practical teaching. All teaching material (power points, video-recording of the lectures, clinical cases and tests were provided through an interactive web interface.

IDEAL Deliverables were split in 3 work packages:

– Work Package 1 : International Intensive Infectious Disease Course (I3DC) for European Students

The courses were delivered over a week for students of  Université Paris Descartes, NHS Lothian, Universiteit Antwerpen and Università Cattolica del Sacre Cuore.

This curriculum had been implemented for 3 years before successfully in Paris, Roma and Edinburgh, and was now offered as an alternative course to the classical curriculum, recognized by 5 ECTS in Paris and Roma.

– Work Package 2: Infectious Diseases Summer School

Infectious Diseases Summer School provided advanced teaching for undergraduate European Students with the involvement of European and Ugandan teachers and their unvaluable practical experience, focusing on infections in emerging countries (in Africa mainly), current major “hot topics” in infectious diseases, such as immigration burdens, and outbreaks.

– Work Package 3: Distant-learning

Distant learning provided all the teaching material implemented in Work Package 1 and Work Pacakge 2 to participating Ugandan partners (Mary Lacor Hospital of Gulu and Mother Kevin Postgraduate Medical School in Kampala).

The global IDEAL project improved the quality and relevance of undergraduate infectious diseases teaching within Europe. It created a forum of experienced teachers being a reference for any countries. It developed a common strong expertise among medical students in Europe, enhanced their international perspective and promoted “global health concepts at an early stage of their undergraduate medical curricula. It promoted teachers’ and students’ mobility by creating a strong network of interactions between European Universities and beyond.

The project developed sustainable updated high-level learning tools (tailored courses, e-learning platform) that had been shared with other partners from Europe and other countries facing similar needs.

Partners: Université Paris Cité (former Université Paris Descartes; coordinator ; FR), Università Cattolica del Sacre Cuore di Roma (IT) ; NHS Lothian (SCOT) ; Universiteit Antwerpen (BEL) ; Universitätsklinikum Hamburg Eppendorf (GER); Aston University (UK); UMC Utrecht (NED); National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR)

IDEAL+ (Infectious Diseases Education through Active Learning +) is a project that aimed at improving European medical education through the lens of infectious diseases in an intercultural and practice-oriented approach.

The project pointed at multiple targets (undergraduate students, junior/senior health educators, professionals, teachers from other disciplines interested in innovative teaching techniques) that address the challenge of teaching infectious diseases.

IDEAL+ provided expertly prepared training, with options for distance learning and disseminated innovative tools for teaching undergraduate students.

Deliverables were split in 3 work packages:

– Work Package 1 : IDEAL +Teacher Training Seminar

IDEAL+ Teacher Training Seminar is a 3-day seminar opened to 12-15 trainee medical educators each year. It aims at promoting excellence in teaching and skills development by:

improving the level and relevance of European medical educators’ teaching,

disseminating more accurate and innovative teaching skills,

better addressing the students’ need for practical training at an undergraduate level,

developing high-level teaching tools that will enhance exchanges between medical educators and create a community of teachers around Europe.

– Work Package 2 : IDEAL + Student Infectious Diseases Training Course

IDEAL+ Student Infectious Diseases Training Course is an intensive course of practical teaching on Infectious Diseases for undergraduate students delivered over one week by a team of European Infectious Diseases medical educators. It aims at tackling skills gap on Infectious Diseases among European medical students with a renewed and improved teaching to:

better prepare medical students to the challenges of Infectious Diseases control;

develop a strong common knowledge in infectious diseases among European students based on a renewed and improved teaching approach;

reduce the gap between European medical curricula, thus promoting undergraduate students’ mobility.

– Work Package 3 : IDEAL+ Digital learning platform

IDEAL+ Digital learning platform provides open-source resources produced within the programme and focusing on innovative teaching methods for medical educators and on Infectious Diseases for undergraduate medical students.

Partners: Université Paris Cité (former Université Paris Descartes; coordinator ; FR), Università Cattolica del Sacre Cuore di Roma (IT) ; Universiteit Antwerpen (BEL) ; Universitätsklinikum Hamburg Eppendorf (GER); UMC Utrecht (NED); National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR)

IDEALITER (Infectious Diseases Education Advanced Level Intensive Training for a nEw Reality) builds a unique programme addressing essential needs and building and strong joint expertise, stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices, targeting a broader audience and promoting inter-connected EU higher education systems.

IDEALiTER deliverables are split in 3 work packages:

– Work Package 1 : Advanced Training Sessions for Students

IDEALiTER Advanced Student Infectious Diseases Training Course is an intensive advanced course for about practical teaching on Infectious Diseases for undergraduate, postgraduate medical/healthcare students and professionals (residents early post graduate students and other health workers as “first liners” in ID crises, like pharmacists or nurses) delivered over one week by a team of European Infectious Diseases medical educators.

It aims at training healthcare students and professionals to the challenges raised by infectious diseases by:

> Creating a joint interconnected EU curriculum based on innovative engaging training approaches

> Evaluating the quality of such training

– Work Package 2 : European Dissemination

IDEALiTER aims at disseminating the DNA of the programme among external institutions, and to further disseminate innovative teaching methods among medical/health educators/trainers through annual seminars.

The IDEALiTER “Train the trainers” (TTT) seminar’s main goals are to:

> Train infectious diseases trainers from partnering institutions on skills required for the advanced ID course (WP2) like flip-the-classroom approaches, case-based clinical reasoning, simulation, debriefing, gaming, and hybrid synchronous and asynchronous approaches, theoretically supported by Chi’s ICAP model, etc;

> Coach trainers already trained with the TTT seminars into training and mentoring their peers on activating hybrid teaching and learning methods.

IDEALiTER partners are also mentoring new partner institutions to:

• Develop partnerships between the 5 infectious diseases partnering institutions and 5 new European institutions wishing to develop innovative teaching activities for undergraduate medical students
• Improve the skills of a large array of European healthcare professionals. Selection of external institutions will give a specific focus to areas with highest healthcare needs to maximize the impact of the program
• Support sustainability and dissemination of the established achievements of the IDEAL programs
• Create a new model of dissemination, where each teaching partner mentor an external European institution into the programme

– Work Package 3 : Summer schools

An annual summer school is dedicated to public health issues, targeting undergraduate medical students with attention to antibiotic stewardship (1 day), basics of ID epidemiology (1 day), vaccinology (1 day), pandemic preparedness (1 day) and communication (including aspects of trust and health promotion) (1day). It will bring together students and trainers from all institutions and foster further exchanges and bonds.