The international BENEFITS project is nearing the end, but not the cooperation of the experts involved

The cooperation between the team involved in the international BENEFITS project was so good that its members would like to continue even after the project has finished. This resolution was announced during the farewell meeting held in Barcelona on 19 and 20 June. Participants came from 7 universities and 6 countries, namely Turkey, Hungary, Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. The cooperation was realised thanks to the “Better & Effective Nursing Education For Improving Transcultural Nursing Skills (BENEFITS)” project, financed from the programme ERASMUS+ KA203 Strategic Partnerships for higher education.

Prof. PhDr. Valérie Tóthová, Ph.D., Vice-Dean for Science and Research, and Head of the Institute of Nursing, Midwifery, and Emergency Care of the FHSS USB said: “During the two-day meeting, we evaluated the progress, achieved results, and outcomes of the project. The active three-year cooperation brought abundant pedagogical and scientific outcomes. The representatives of individual countries presented the benefits of the project, how the outcomes influenced teaching transcultural nursing in their respective faculties and plans for the future use of these outcomes. Thanks to the project, we created a questionnaire for the assessment of the cultural competence of students of nursing and realised a pilot one-week intensive joint course on transcultural nursing at Giresun university, Turkey. We also published a book on transcultural nursing, articles in impacted journals containing the results of our questionnaire survey, and an analysis of curricula. Those perfect outcomes are evidence of the high-quality work of the whole team.” 

The main coordinator of the project at our faculty was prof. Tóthová. The other participants were Mgr. Věra Hellerová, Ph.D., and doc. PhDr. Marie Trešlová, Ph.D. who carried out some activities. The final meeting took place at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Faculty of Medicine. The participants were Mgr. Ivana Chloubová, Ph.D. – Dean of the FHSS USB, Associate Professor Trešlová, and Professor Tóthová. Prof. Tóthová concluded: “I am delighted that our faculty had an opportunity to become a member of the consortium and cooperate with foreign experts on transcultural nursing. Our experiences will be used both in teaching and scientific work. I am also glad that, during the final meeting, the Dean had an opportunity to get acquainted with the process of solving the project and all the outcomes, and experienced the friendly atmosphere and excellent cooperation among the team members – which we would like to further develop after the end of the project. The next issue to solve is the final report, which is due by the end of August.”