The main objective of this report is to analyse and inform about international labour mobility, particularly within Europe, from the perspective of the Dutch Health and Social Care Sector. The report starts by describing the introduction of a new care system in The Netherlands. The government does not participate directly in the actual provision of care. This is a task principally for private care suppliers. Furthermore, the legal position of the Health and Social Care professions, regulated through the Individual Health Care Professions Act, and questions like the international recognition of degrees and the evaluation of foreign diplomas are discussed. This is followed by a clarification of the Dutch education system, particularly, relating to the study of medicine, nursing education and social work education. Subsequently, some core data on the ageing Dutch population are presented. The grey pressure increases and this will have an impact on health spending, health support and the future labour market. Then what follows is a description of the development of employment in the Dutch Health and Social Care Sector, per branch as well as the professions that are engaged in it. The general picture, at this moment, is that the Health and Social Care labour market is reasonably in balance. This trend will continue in the near future; shortages are expected only in the long term. All research done on the subject indicates that international mobility of medical and social professionals is still low in the Netherlands. The question remains whether a more active recruitment policy would be a solution for the expected long term shortages. The report concludes with a look at recruitment policy and some of its developments at the global, national and local level.
The objective of this intervention study was to map instituted and instituting movements present in the work of the Family Health Strategy in the development of their care practices. The theoretical framework is based on institutional analysis, using the schizoanalytic approach. Group meetings were carried out with the staff to discuss how they provided collective care in continuing health education. The study subjects were professionals from the team and students who were engaged in academic activity in the service. The average attendance was twelve people per meeting, and there were a total of eight meetings from March to July 2010. Data were grouped into two immanent strata: the relationships of the team and the relationship with clients. The strata point to the intersection of education and legal institutions and the social and technical division of labor. Collective thinking in groups appeared to be effective in denaturalizing established processes and interrogating places, knowledge and practices.
LINK
Transitions in health care and the increasing pace at which technological innovations emerge, have led to new professional approach at the crossroads of health care and technology. In order to adequately deal with these transition processes and challenges before future professionals access the labour market, Fontys University of Applied Sciences is in a transition to combining education with interdisciplinary practice-based research. Fontys UAS is launching a new centre of expertise in Health Care and Technology, which is a new approach compared to existing educational structures. The new centre is presented as an example of how new initiatives in the field of education and research at the intersection of care and technology can be shaped.
This proposal is a resubmission of an earlier proposal (Dossier nr: GOCH.KIEM.KGC02.079) which was not approved because of the too ambitious planning. As advised by the commission, the focus is kept only on the recycling of the mattress cover. The Netherlands has 180,000+ waterproof mattresses in the healthcare sector, of which yearly 40,000+ mattresses are discarded. Owing to the rapidly aging population it is expected to increase the demand for these waterproof mattresses in the consumer sector as well. Considering the complex nature of functional mattresses, these valuable resources are partly incinerated. To achieve a circular economy, Dutch Government aims for a 50% reduction in the use of primary raw materials in five key economic sectors including ‘consumer products’ by 2030. Within the scope of this research, Saxion together with partners (CFC BV, Deron BV, MRE BV & Klieverik Heli BV) will bring emphasis on Recycling (sustainable chemistry) of mattress covers. Other aspects such as reuse and re-designing are beyond the scope of this project proposal, for which a bigger consortium will be built during the course of this project. A case under study is a water-impermeable mattress cover made of 100% polyester with polyurethane (PU) coatings. The goal is to enable the circular use of textiles with (multilayer) ‘coatings’, which are not recyclable yet. These ‘coatings’ comprise functional coatings as well as adhesion layers. Therefore, novel triggerable molecular systems and the corresponding recycling processes will be developed. The coatings will be activated by a specific trigger (bio)-chemical solvation, heat, pressure, humidity, microwave, or combination of thereof. The emphasis is to develop a scalable coating removal process. Learnings will be used to build larger (inter)-national consortia to develop multiple industry closed-loop solutions required for 100% mattress circularity with desired functionality. The generated knowledge will be used for education at Saxion.
To optimize patient care, it is vital to prevent infections in healthcare facilities. In this respect, the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains threatens public healthcare. Current gold standard techniques are based on classical microbiological assays that are time consuming and need complex expensive lab environments. This limits their use for high throughput bacterial screening to perform optimal hygiene control. The infection prevention workers in hospitals and elderly nursing homes underline the urgency of a point-of-care tool that is able to detect bacterial loads on-site in a fast, precise and reliable manner while remaining with the available budgets. The aim of this proposal titled SURFSCAN is to develop a novel point-of-care tool for bacterial load screening on various surfaces throughout the daily routine of professionals in healthcare facilities. Given the expertise of the consortium partners, the point-of-care tool will be based on a biomimetic sensor combining surface imprinted polymers (SIPs), that act as synthetic bacterial receptors, with a thermal read-out strategy for detection. The functionality and performance of this biomimetic sensor has been shown in lab conditions and published in peer reviewed journals. Within this proposal, key elements will be optimized to translate the proof of principle concept into a complete clinical prototype for on-site application. These elements are essential for final implementation of the device as a screening and assessment tool for scanning bacterial loads on surfaces by hospital professionals. The research project offers a unique collaboration among different end-users (hospitals and SMEs), and knowledge institutions (Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, Fontys University of Applied Sciences and Maastricht Science Programme, IDEE-Maastricht University), which guarantees transfer of fundamental knowledge to the market and end-user needs.
