Stakeholder involvement

The group discussion took place on February 7, 2023, at 5 pm in a room in the FH Vorarlberg. Participants have been:

• medical doctor (medical doctor palliative care), responsible for a palliative care ward in an acute care hospital.
• medical doctor and anaesthetists (medical doctor / lecturer) in the role of a lecturer in the bachelor’s degree programme in Health Care at the FH Vorarlberg. 
• student Bachelor of Health Care at the FH Vorarlberg (nursing student).
• lecturer with a focus on palliative care at the FH Vorarlberg (nursing lecturer).
• patient with acute pain experiences (at the same time lecturer at the FH Vorarlberg) (pwp).
• family member whose daughter is a pain patient (family member).
• nurse (B.Sc.), on a medical ward (at the same time also lecturer in the bachelor's degree program Healthcare at the FH Vorarlberg) (nurse).

Following the general introduction to the European project TECH2MATCH, informed consent was taken and then the various technical approaches which play a role in pain management (apps, virtual reality, and telehealth) were demonstrated. The discussion following was lively, covering many different aspects and a few questions had been asked by the moderator for clarification and summary. All participants subsequently confirmed their wish to continue participating in another group discussion and gave positive feedback about the event either orally or in writing. One doctor invited the FH Vorarlberg to the palliative care ward asking for demonstration of virtual reality in the context of pain management. He was positively surprised by the group's discussion and wanted to introduce the topic on a lower level to his colleagues. 

The focus group interview with the stakeholder group for TECH2MATCH in Denmark took place February 27, 2023, at University College North Denmark – Selma Lagerløfs Vej 2, Aalborg.

The agenda for the stakeholder group:

• Welcome to the stakeholder group interview for TECH2MATCH
• Brief presentation of the participants in the stakeholder group
• Brief presentation of the purpose of the project and the stakeholder meeting
• The focus group interview
• Conclusion and evaluation – coffee
• Time frame from 15.00 to 17.00.

Participants in the group:

• Student at the midwife program at UCN (late part of the program).
• Student at the midwife program at UCN (first part of the program).
• Lecturer with a focus on rehabilitation work for people with pain at UCN (Occupational therapy Program. Lecturer).
• Practicing midwife employed at the local hospital
• Newly employed lecturer at the midwife program at UCN (Trained midwife)

Participant who did not participate:

• Patient with acute pain experiences
• Lecturer with a focus on pain in rehabilitation (Physiotherapist program).

Points and experiences:
Different experiences with different kinds of technologies emerged during the interview. And all the participants were very interested in gaining new knowledge and experience with different types of technologies. The students were very interested in gaining experience and concrete technological competences to be able to meet the expectations they had with the practical work in the education. All participants wish to continue in this stakeholder group.

The focus group interview took place in SeAMK on February 22, 2023. Everyone, who has been invited, was able to participate. There were two patients with pain and their relatives, nursing and physiotherapy professionals and students. Two lecturers from SeAMK, who have experience in health care technology, participated in the interview as well. All together ten participants attended and the interviewers. Project group members Katriina and Sanna took over the interview after a short presentation of the project.

In the afternoon, the group discussed about the following two themes:

• What kind of experiences do you have with technological aids used in pain management?
• What kind of skills and competences will healthcare professionals need in the future in relation to health technology solutions for pain management?

The group worked well together, and there were a lot of interesting issues arising from the questions:

• What is the role of technology nowadays in healthcare?
• How can we learn technological skills needed in healthcare?

The focus group was carried out on February 23, 2023, at 4 pm in the Faculty of Physiotherapy and Nursery of Toledo. It was a face-to-face meeting and had a duration of 2 hours. The stakeholder group was composed of 10 participants: a lecturer of Physiotherapy and a lecturer of Nursery; a undergraduate student of Physiotherapy and a predoctoral student; 2 Physiotherapists with experience in spinal cord injury and orthopedics and musculoskeletal disorders; 2 patients with pain (neuropathic pain and chronic pain) and their relatives.

Professors and clinical professionals showed the need for experience and clinical reasoning for personalized therapies. Students exposed the need for pain technological knowledge. Patients and relatives provided the essential point of view regarding the needs for information, advice and guidance, as well as social skills on the part of health professionals.

All participants contributed to the focus group and the discussion was fluent. They reported positive feelings at the end of the meeting.

In relation to task 3.2, FHV held a stakeholder group workshop on July 20, 2023, from 17:00- 19:00. The workshop was designed to ensure that the content of the blended learning and real-life scenarios would be relevant, useful, and applicable and assist in the development of the relevant frameworks. Participants were asked to participate in a workshop consisting of two exercises. The first focused on Blended Learning and the second on Real-Life Scenarios.

Summary of feedback: Blended learning

The framework for blended learning must include: an in-depth explanation of pain, pain treatments and pharmacology; assessments should be wide ranging to ensure appropriate matching with available technologies and there should be continuous methods of monitoring both effectiveness of pain treatment and the technology which is being used. 1. Real-Life Scenarios

Summary of feedback: Real-life scenarios

For real-life scenarios, participants had begun to match some technology with the situations they described. The framework should link these real-life scenarios with suggestions for how these situations could be managed with technology to improve the experiences of people with pain.

Conclusion

Following the workshops, it was possible to build up a preliminary framework structure which incorporated the suggestions of the participants.

In relation to task 3.3, a survey was created by the partners. FHV distributed the questionnaires to pedagogical experts (Lecturers in the stakeholder group and in the Centre for Lifelong Learning (FHV)). These responses were then reviewed and considered with respect to the Framework for teaching the lecturers. Their suggestions included adding a tools to foster engagement and ensuring good bridges to practice.

Stakeholder involvement at UCN during WP3 was carried out during task 3.2 and task 3.3. The first example of stakeholder involvement at UCN in WP3 relates to task 3.2. Here, the stakeholders contributed with feedback and perspectives on the two teaching approaches Blended Learning and Real-life scenarios. All stakeholders were invited to participate in a focus group and received information beforehand on the two teaching approaches, consisting of best practice examples identified by the consortium in task 3.1. A semistructured guide guided the focus group, transcribed, and thematically analyzed.

In task 3.3, two examples of stakeholder involvement were carried out simultaneously. A focus group interview was carried out involving lecturers from healthcare education. The interview focused on a discussion of the framework developed to prepare future lecturers to teach the TECH2MATCH course. The participating lecturers were from the already established stakeholder group and were invited based on a purposive sampling.

Furthermore, a survey was distributed, using SurveyXact, among all members of the stakeholder group. The survey content contained questions related to experiences with using MOOCs and considerations related to planning an xMOOC. All survey questions were developed by the respective task leader and applied primarily a Likert scale and open-ended questions. A translation from English to Danish was carried out before forwarding the survey to all stakeholders affiliated with the TECH2MATCH project at UCN.

The stakeholder involvement contributed with main themes of relevance for both blended learning and real-life scenarios, highligthed by the participants. Collaboration among peers and lecturers, the importance of communication in the learning proces and a sound theoretical foundation were all themes emphasized by the stakeholders. Furthermore, the stakeholder group considered real-life scenarios as a highly effective way of learning students about the use of technology in PwP.

The focus group meeting took place in SeAMK on August 24, 2023. Participants from the previous group interview were invited to the stakeholder group meeting. About a week before the interview, an official invitation was sent to the participants by e-mail. The discussion was based on voluntary participation. There were eight participants in the discussion: healthcare teachers (2 persons), healthcare professionals (a nurse and a physiotherapist), a nursing student, pain patients (2 persons) and relative of pain patient. Project group members described the current situation of the project. A short PowerPoint presentation about the discussion's themes was used for orientation. Discussion consisted of two parts.

In the first part of discussion the participants described what should be taught to the health care student about the pain. These keywords were written on the whiteboard during discussion. After this discussion the main themes were built together from keywords. These main themes were the most relevant content to be taught to health care students according to stakeholder groups' point of view.

In the second part, the original plan was to divide the group into two: one group would include healthcare teachers and students, other group healthcare professionals, pain patients and relatives of pain patients. Because the first part discussion was very productive, the project group decided to continue discussion in one group. In the second part discussion consists of how these raised themes should be taught. The discussion went well, and it was active and rich. The discussion lasted around two hours.

This work package had two objectives: a) for teachers, to design how to prepare teachers for the task of teaching a new course, with an already developed content and pedagogical framework b) for stakeholders, to discuss the development of the framework for xMOOC (Extended Massive Open Online Course).

On the one hand, the teachers' stakeholder group results highlighted the importance of the course organization (schedule, number of modules, objectives, etc). The importance of the participants in the "teach the teachers" course gaining practical experience with the relevant technologies was highlighted. None of the stakeholders felt it necessary to engage in transnational collaboration during the course. Instead, they felt that collaboration with other teachers involved in the course would be problematic if communication was in a non-native language.

On the other hand, the results with stakeholders, declared they having participated in more than 6 MOOCs, considering that they had technical and conceptual knowledge about MOOCs. Regarding the aspects to be taken into account, they fully agreed that "statistics on completion and dropout rates are collected", "the course can be delivered in the participants' mother tongue", "participants receive certificates of participation and attendance". In addition, other important aspects were that the course should be accessible from computers and mobile phones, the % of the course completed should be displayed and delivery dates should be easily identified. Regarding communication and collaboration between teachers and participants, the majority strongly agreed that "the course should include live teaching sessions such as webinars", and strongly agreed that "feedback from teachers on assignments and work completed" and "communication with other participants should be part of the course".

Finally, the participants considered that the following tools could facilitate participation in the online course: collaboration among students, creation of forums by subject, collaborative work, communication with students, webinar/video resources, online chats, forums, feedback on the correction of assignments and tests, multiple choice questions for continuous evaluation during the course, exchange of students between universities for "ERASMUS" type exchange and seminars or online meetings with other countries to discuss knowledge.