Principal Investigator: Natalie McEvoy
The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a complex environment, where nurses are trained to deliver highly specialized care to critically ill patients. The ICU is a rapidly changing environment with new treatments and interventions emerging. However, despite advancements in care practices and treatment protocols, there remains significant variability in patient safety related outcomes. The World Health Organisation estimates that 1 in 10 patients are harmed in healthcare settings and that as many as 80% of these harms are avoidable.
Nurses are active participants in preventing and reducing the incidence of avoidable harms. Pressure ulcers, healthcare-associated infections (HCAI), and delirium are some of the most frequently cited patient safety related outcomes in the ICU. However, there are inconsistencies in how these outcomes are measured across the world. Future efforts are needed to standardise and harmonise how we measure these outcomes across European countries and to identify factors that contribute to their prevention which would guide preventative care strategies. If these outcomes were measured in the same way across countries, this would facilitate further research with the aim of reducing the incidence of these avoidable harms and therefore enhancing the quality of patient care in ICUs. This network will work towards advancing patient safety through standardised measurement of three patient safety outcome measures (pressure ulcers, HCAIs and delirium). The processes that contribute to the development of these outcomes will also be explored. This network will enable larger scale research studies of groundbreaking interventions to reduce the incidence of these avoidable harms.
Specific objectives include:
Research Coordination
● Coordinate the compilation of the available tools used in each network healthcare system to measure the identified patient safety related outcomes (pressure ulcers, delirium and healthcare- associated infections).
● Collectively identify the most appropriate measurement tools to assess for the presence of these outcomes across the COST network of European countries
● Organize and ensure translation of these tools across several European languages
● Undertake point prevalence studies, using the selected measurement tools to determine the scale of each problem (outcome) across the COST network of European countries
● Assess nurses’ knowledge of pressure ulcers, delirium and HCAIs, across the network, using a shared set of standards and knowledge requirements
● Coordinate determination of the processes that lead to the development of these adverse outcomes in clinical practice (e.g. the methods and frequency of formal risk assessment)
● Coordinate a better understanding of the organisational or systems level factors that may lead to these adverse patient outcomes (nurse staffing, nurse-patient ratio)
● Establish long-term enduring relationships between an interdisciplinary team of patient safety conscious clinical ICU nurses and researchers in intensive care.
● Identify research priorities for critical care nurses in the areas of HCAIs, delirium and PUs
Capacity Building
● To foster international network-wide knowledge exchange and the development of a research agenda focused on improving patient outcomes
● To enhance nurse researchers skills to ensure a highly trained critical care nursing workforce
● Promote the sharing of knowledge and experience between more-experienced researchers and young/early career nurse researchers
● Coordinate joint educational and research courses/workshops/meetings with other COST Actions/EU projects
● Establish an inclusive network of stakeholders, including nurse researchers, nurse educators, clinical bedside nurses, advanced practice nurses, to help close the evidence-practice gap in nursing care. This network will incorporate diverse expertise, informed by a broad spectrum of stakeholders with other relevant multidisciplinary team members included
● Encourage and support engagement through webinars, podcasts, virtual learning cafes and other innovative means of bringing EU researchers together
● Incorporate the patient voice into a patient safety focused research agenda, to ensure a patient centred approach to reducing the incidence of avoidable harms
● Develop, transform, and empower nurse leaders from the WHO European Region to advance patient safety in the ICU
● Implement educational programmes to educate nurses on areas where knowledge gaps have been identified (e.g. screening tools for pressure ulcers, infection and delirium)
● Working to have Patient Safety Related Outcome Measures in European Intensive Care Units recognized as a Thematic Network in the EU Health Policy Platform (HPP)
Principal Investigator: Laura Visiers
Due to globalisation and increasing migration, we all need to adapt and learn to live in multicultural environments. Because of the cultural diversity in our society, it is urgent that nursing students acquire cultural skills to provide the best health care and to improve cross-collaboration work. Additionally, make instructors aware that trainings and commitment on cultural diversity are key to transforming and promoting cultural skills and attitudes teaching among the future health professionals.
Methodology: Multicenter prospective longitudinal descriptive observational study of several cohorts of Nursing Degree students from different European universities from 2021-2025.
The target population will be Nursing Degree students and teachers from different European universities. For the cultural competencies assessment, the Cultural Competence Assessment (CCA) questionnaire will be used - its original version (English) and its validated versions in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish. An online questionnaire will be used to collect the answers. To carry out the study, the biomedical research ethical principles will be observed, and data confidentiality will be guaranteed. Similarly, special consideration will be taken in regard with students, to respect their right and their interest in participating voluntarily in the project, without any academic repercussions.
The measurement instrument will be the Cultural Competence Assessment (CCA) that was created and validated by Schim et al. in 2003 with a reliability of 0.92 (Cronbach's alpha). It consists of 25 items. This instrument has been adapted and validated to the Spanish (CCA-S), Italian (CCA-I), Portuguese (CCA-P) and Turkish (CCA-T) contexts. Currently being validated into Lithuanian. In the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese versions, the questionnaire contains four dimensions: dimension 1 (sensitivity), dimension 2 (awareness), dimension 3 (seeking information) and dimension 4 (active behaviour).
Principal Investigator: Ermira Tartari Bonnici, Maria Cassar
The Water EDUCare project, through training, campaigns and other awareness-raising interventions, will seek to upskill the healthcare workforce with knowledge on the environmental impact in water of antibiotic misuse and overuse. It will train healthcare professionals to reduce pharmaceutical, especially antibiotic, pollution thereby improving water quality and reducing the risk of acceleration of antibiotic resistance in the environment. The project will also promote and increase the uptake of the other components of the AMR EDUCare training: responsible antibiotic prescription and patient communication. Results from the campaigns implemented at the hospitals and measurements of pharmaceutical pollution at the hospital sites will be leveraged to raise awareness and inform EU policy makers of the threats posed by antibiotic waste release and pharmaceutical pollution in water with the aim of strengthening the provisions of the Wastewater Framework Directive and the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.
Principal Investigator: Kati Naamanka Turku University of Applied Science
The project sought to develop ethical safety in clinical practice with a focus on individuals in the nursing and physiotherapy professions.!
Principal Investigator: Allison Squires, New York University
Funded international research survey to explore the impact of the COVID pandemic on the nursing profession
Principal Investigator: Allison Squires
The development of global index on the nursinf profession
Principal Investigator: Lisa Gomes university of Minho , Spain
The development of emotional competence using VR games.
Principal Investigator: Leena Salimenen University of Turku, Finland
The development of new nurse educators : research and resources
Principal Investigator: Gina Friel
Global survey about planetary health in nurse education
Principal Investigator: Hennalux,(Belgium) and Université Abdelmalek Essaâdi (UAE) Morroco. Malta UM is partner
The BeSkilled project, an Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education (CBHE) initiative aimed at integrating soft skills into Moroccan university curricula. This project seeks to bolster academic excellence and improve the employability of graduates by embedding transversal competencies into higher education programs.