Three things you need to know about MBO healthcare and social care courses
Are your findings from dementia research relevant to dementia care in practice? If so, it’s a good idea to share them through training programmes for healthcare and social care professionals. Your funding body may also require you to collaborate with educational institutions. To make this happen, there are a few things you need to know.
Questions that might be going through your mind: how do you know if your knowledge is actually needed? Is there already teaching material on the subject? And how do you ultimately get your knowledge incorporated into care training programmes?
1: Your knowledge is essential for efficient care
The number of people with dementia is set to rise from 310,000 today to over 610,000 by 2050. However, the number of enrolments in healthcare training programmes has been falling for six years running (more on this at venvn.nl). In future, therefore, fewer healthcare professionals will be caring for more older people with dementia. Healthcare must therefore become more efficient and effective. If you’re still in any doubt: your knowledge is desperately needed in healthcare education!
2: The backbone of the care sector is made up of vocational college graduates
There are sixty healthcare training programmes in the Netherlands, ranging from vocational education (MBO) to university education (WO). The majority of professionals who work with people with dementia on a daily basis have completed vocational education (MBO levels 1 to 4). Up-to-date knowledge about dementia is therefore highly relevant to MBO students. This does mean, however, that your academic information needs to be adapted to suit the MBO level.
3: Teachers source their information from surprising places
You might expect vocational teachers to consult a national resource centre for teaching materials. In practice, however, things are different. There is no such central point of contact. Teachers also have the freedom to design their own lessons on care for older people. The majority of them source information from reliable public online sources, including:
Do you have any knowledge that teachers might find useful? Let us know: DEMPACT is happy to help and will use its network to ensure your knowledge is featured on (one of) these websites. There are also a few other things you can do – take a look: Sharing your knowledge of dementia with healthcare and social care training programmes?
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