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The Global Health Office continues to forge strong ties with the Netherlands, as we deepen global health connections in the professions of nursing and medicine. On December 2, 2014, McMaster University hosted a delegation from across the Netherlands to study, discuss, and compare developments in the field of medical and nursing education at the national level.

 

With the visit, we explored a myriad of questions – ultimately: are our medical and nursing curricula and educational models sufficiently in line with the health science environment of the 21st century?

 

The Dutch contingency was made up of key actors in the medical educational field. The group included 18 health officials from the boards of two academic hospitals in Amsterdam – the VU University Medical Center Amsterdam (VUmc) and the Academic Medical Center (AMC – University of Amsterdam) – as well as the Chief of the Dutch National Committee on Innovation in Health Care Professions & Education, and representatives from the nursing colleges in the Amsterdam region.

 

McMaster faculty Dr. Andrea Baumann, Dr. Alan Neville, Dr. Carolyn Byrne and Dr. Eileen Hutton met with the visitors, who then joined Dr. Bruce Wainman for an informative tour of the Anatomy & Surgical Skills Lab. The delegation also met with Dr. Akbar Panju at the McMaster University Medical Centre’s innovative Boris Clinic to learn more about our patient-centred learning and healthcare model.