Professor Fintan Sheerin

The HEAL Project has 5 concrete activity phases 1) Setting the scene In the first phase of the project, a needs assessment and a scoping review will be developed. The needs assessment will determine the concrete needs, opportunities, anxieties, promoting factors and barriers related to the introduction of new learning methods that can be a supplement to the traditional physical internship in the future hospitals. The scoping review will collect and systemise existing knowledge about innovative methods in medical education in internships, identifying the barriers and promoting factors 2) Development Based on the needs assessment and the scoping review, this phase will be the development phase, the HEAL project partners will develop the Innovative Framework, which will be a generic process model, which will guide the end users (students, teaching staff and coordinators of internships) through an internship process from planning, implementation, assessment and evaluation. The model will motivate and promote collaboration, dialogue and co-creation among the end users to ensure high quality internships. 3) Testing After having developed a prototype of the Innovative Framework for high quality learning in internships, a testing period will follow, where concrete internships are organized and executed through the use of the Innovative Framework. A minimum of 60 students will participate in the testing from each country. A concrete testing plan will be developed for each hospital in close collaboration with the target groups. 4) Evaluation At the same time as implementing the testing phase, the evaluation phase will be implemented. As part of the testing phase for each hospital, a concrete set of success criteria and indicators will be listed and evaluated through questionnaires and focus group interviews. 5) Conceptualisation In this last phase of the project, the innovate framework for high quality learning in internships will be fine-tuned, adapted and finalized based on the input from the evaluation phase, and the following aspects will be added to the prototype; policy and implementation.

To undertake a survey of education undertaken by healthcare staff in the 112 HSE and 6 Section 38 Residential Care Facilities for Older People, as it relates to the recommendations of the COVID-19 Nursing Homes Expert Panel.

The objectives of the research are to: a) capture the financial and resource impact of introducing a personalised budgets approach for both the person with a disability and for the system; b) measure the extent to which resource assignment and additional supports have changed following the introduction of a personalised budget; c) estimate future take-up of personalised budgets, based on population forecasts; d) identify gaps or pressure-points in the system where additional resources might be required.

This research will examine precipitating factors for poorer mental health in staff, particularly care workers and nurses working day-to-day with people with intellectual disabilities, barriers to accessing mental health supports for these staff members, and challenges faced in maximising good mental health in order to better support people with intellectual disabilities.