Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment S kills Education Programme for Nurses - Can You S ee the Big Picture?

As European people age they are at an increased risk to suffer from one or more chronic conditions, functional decline, and frailty. Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) skills are needed for nurses to support older people to live more active lives. Successful CGA improves the quality of life of older people, delays the progression of frailty, reduces hospital admissions and the length of hospital stays. By developing a new nursing education programme for CGA, the BigPicture project will advance the upskilling of professional nurses, and the validation of their prior knowledge. The project boosts innovation capacity in gerontological nursing through collaboration and flow of knowledge among vocational education and training providers, universities, and labour market actors. This project includes an analysis of CGA skills and best practices (WP2), and a co-creation phase where new curricula with innovative learning and teaching methods including digital 3D simulations are developed(WP3). The project will enhance the skills of nurses by piloting and evaluating the new curricula with over 200 students and nurses (WP4). The curriculum is designed to support the continuous training and lifelong learning of professional nurses and will be integrated into the optional study offerings of six EU higher education institutions during the project. Although designed to suit the needs of professional nurses’ upskilling, the study programme can be completed by students ranging from EQF levels 4-7. The project will include an element of entrepreneurial studies in the curriculum by cooperating with a homecare provider company. Along with boosting entrepreneurial mindsets, the project focuses on fostering the digital skills of current and future nurses. This is done by introducing the state-of-the-art digital methods used in homecare, integrating a 3D simulation learning environment in the methods of education, as well as offering the studies on a centralized digital platform.