What is the IDEAL program?

The courses were delivered over the course of a week to students of Université Paris Descartes, NHS Lothian, Universiteit Antwerpen, and Università Cattolica del Sacre Cuore. After being successfully implemented for 3 years in Paris, Roma and Edinburgh, this curriculum was then offered as an alternative to the classical curriculum, and was recognized for 5 ECTS credits in Paris and Roma.

The Infectious Diseases Summer School provided advanced teaching for European undergraduate students, with the involvement of European and Ugandan teachers sharing their invaluable practical experience. The program focused on infections in emerging countries (mainly in Africa), current major “hot topics” in infectious diseases such as the burden of immigration, and outbreaks.

Distance learning provided all the teaching materials implemented in Work Packages 1 and 2 to the participating Ugandan partners (Mary Lacor Hospital in Gulu and Mother Kevin Postgraduate Medical School in Kampala).

The global IDEAL project improved the quality and relevance of undergraduate infectious diseases teaching across Europe. It created a forum of experienced teachers, serving as a reference for countries worldwide. The project developed a strong, shared expertise among medical students in Europe, enhanced their international perspectives, and promoted global health concepts at an early stage of their undergraduate medical curricula. It also encouraged teacher and student mobility by creating a strong network of interactions between European universities and beyond.

Additionally, the project developed sustainable, high-level learning tools (tailored courses and an e-learning platform), which were shared with other partners from Europe and other countries facing similar needs.

The IDEAL+ Teacher Training Seminar is a 3-day event open to 12-15 trainee medical educators each year. Its goal is to promote excellence in teaching and skills development by:

– Improving the level and relevance of teaching among European medical educators,

– Disseminating more accurate and innovative teaching techniques,

– Better addressing students’ needs for practical training at the undergraduate level,

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

The IDEAL+ Student Infectious Diseases Training Course is an intensive, one-week course focused on practical teaching in infectious diseases for undergraduate students. It is delivered by a team of European infectious diseases medical educators. The course aims to address the skills gap in infectious diseases among European medical students through a renewed and improved teaching approach, with the following objectives:

– Better preparing medical students for the challenges of infectious disease control,

– Developing a strong, shared knowledge of infectious diseases among European students,

– Reducing the gap between European medical curricula, thus promoting undergraduate student mobility.

The IDEAL+ Digital Learning Platform provides open-source resources developed within the program, focusing on innovative teaching methods for medical educators and on infectious diseases for undergraduate medical students.

The IDEALiTER Advanced Student Infectious Diseases Training Course is an intensive, one-week course focused on practical teaching of infectious diseases for undergraduate and postgraduate medical/healthcare students, as well as professionals (such as residents, early post-graduate students, and other healthcare workers, including pharmacists and nurses, who are on the frontlines of infectious disease crises). The course is delivered by a team of European infectious diseases medical educators.

 

The course aims to train healthcare students and professionals to address the challenges posed by infectious diseases by:

– Creating a joint, interconnected EU curriculum based on innovative and engaging training approaches,

– Evaluating the quality of the training provided.

IDEALiTER aims to disseminate the core principles of the program among external institutions and further spread innovative teaching methods among medical and healthcare educators/trainers through annual seminars.

 

The main goals of the IDEALiTER “Train the Trainers” (TTT) seminar are to:

– Train infectious diseases trainers from partnering institutions in the skills required for the advanced ID course (WP2), including flipped classroom approaches, case-based clinical reasoning, simulation, debriefing, gaming, and hybrid synchronous and asynchronous methods, all theoretically supported by Chi’s ICAP model.

– Coach trainers who have completed the TTT seminars to train and mentor their peers in implementing hybrid teaching and learning methods.

 

IDEALiTER partners also mentor new partner institutions to:

– Develop partnerships between the 5 infectious diseases partnering institutions and 5 new European institutions interested in creating innovative teaching activities for undergraduate medical students.

– Improve the skills of a wide range of European healthcare professionals. External institutions will be selected with a specific focus on areas with the highest healthcare needs to maximize the program’s impact.

– Support the sustainability and dissemination of the achievements established by the IDEAL programs.

– Create a new dissemination model, where each teaching partner mentors an external European institution to join the program.

An annual summer school is dedicated to public health issues, targeting undergraduate medical students. The program covers key topics including antibiotic stewardship, basics of ID epidemiology, vaccinology, pandemic preparedness, and communication (with a focus on trust-building and health promotion), each covered in one day. It will bring together students and trainers from all participating institutions, fostering exchanges and strengthening professional bonds.