Our programme is a well-known network of collaborating and visiting educational researchers at institutional, regional, national and international level. We have created a multidisciplinary network with members and partners all over the world to improve healthcare delivery.
Our mission is to improve healthcare delivery through innovative and transformed healthcare education, clinical practice and research. By bringing together educators, policy makers, physicians, students, and patients, our programme will help solve problems within the healthcare system. Research activities include, among others, shared decision making in the consultation room, laparoscopic skills in the operating room, patient safety and simulation in the intensive care unit.
LEARN is the go-to partner for organizations and stakeholders operating within the field of health professions education in the Northern region of the Netherlands and beyond. We have developed an infrastructure to support our collective research efforts. We organize various activities to foster academic enrichment, best practices, dialogue, cooperation, mutual respect and a sense of community and belonging.
In 2015 we started the ‘Juggle Study’, a longitudinal prospective cohort study on goals, well-being and academic performance of medical students. Among other things, we investigate predictors of burnout in medical students. The ‘Juggle Study’ has led to numerous spin-off studies with national and foreign medical faculties expressing their interest in participating (e.g. medical faculties in Maastricht, Belgium, Mexico and India). Results from the ‘Juggle Study’ and interviews with medical students have been used to design and implement a leadership development programme for professional development of teaching staff.
WEBSTER has been established to centralize and share the fragmented knowledge and expertise on simulated education. Within WEBSTER, we accelerate and support innovation, thus improving patient and employee safety and the quality of health care. WEBSTER provides flexible training programs for all healthcare workers within the UMCG. Research themes include trauma leadership, human factors, speaking up in teams and intensive care shift handovers.
Members design, update, and carry out all faculty development initiatives in the UMCG and affiliated teaching hospitals through two interconnected programmes:
‘Teach the Teachers’ consists of three 2-day courses of key educational knowledge and skills which are followed by individual clinical teachers from various departments in a hospital;
‘Teaching on the Run’ provides 3-hour introduction or refresher workshops on specific educational skills which the entire faculty of a department can follow to hone their skills and update their knowledge on educational practice.
These programmes are highly valued and contribute to the perceived status and impact of education throughout a healthcare professional’s career.
The IWF of September 2018, the Education and Training Region North-East Netherlands (Onderwijs- en Opleidingsregio Noord-Oost-Nederland, OOR-NO) has been funding scientific research to make a valuable and structural contribution to the quality and innovation of postgraduate medical education and training. This fund is called ‘Het Innovatie en Wetenschapsfonds’ and is intended for residents, teachers and apprenticeships within the region.
grants support:
scientific research by residents in the field of postgraduate medical education and training; and
innovative projects in the field of specialist training in the region (OOR-NO).
For detailed information about LEARN’s members, activities and successes in the past few years, please download our recent annual report: Annual report 2019
