The research profile Health and Welfare has been granted the funds by Erasmus Strategic Partnership to develop the doctoral course, which will be designed and offered in collaboration with other institutes of higher education in Europe. The course will be a significant element of the university's doctoral programme in Health and Welfare with Focus on Evidence-Based Practice.
"The project and the course that we will develop are an ideal fit within our profile and will be a strong addition to our doctoral programme. At the other institutes of higher education, there are staff who are highly competent when it comes to implementation research, and we will be working with them so that we all make the most of the resources that exist at our various educational institutes. This is a strong partnership within the field," explains Lars Wallin, Professor in the field of nursing and head of the research centre Knowledge Implementation and Patient Safety (KIPS) at Dalarna University.
The project called EISEN - European Implementation Science Education Network, will run over three years, with the first two years going towards the development of the course and the third year going towards testing and evaluating it.
The implementation of new research, skills and knowledge within health and welfare organisations is seldom simple.
"It often takes a great deal of time from when knowledge is produced until when it is put into full practice. In the course that we will put together, doctoral students will be able to learn how to study implementation as well as how implementation is put into effect," explains Lars Wallin further.
Implementation research is a field of research that looks at methods that can support the implementation of research and other evidence-based methods in practice. Implementation can be described as the process that is required for knowledge to be implemented in reality - for example, the realisation of recommendations in national guidelines.
The first meeting took place in Falun. As well as Lars Wallin, representatives from Dalarna University are Anna Ehrenberg, Marie Elf, Malin Tistad and Ragnar Olafsson.
The total funding is 377 206 Euro and will be shared by Högskolan på Vestlandet, Norway (chief applicant); Bangor University, Great Britain; Escuela Superior de Emfermagem de Coimbra, Portugal; and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. The title of the project is “Building the Implementation Workforce for Health and Social Care”.