Independence for successful UM student initiative for patient-oriented care
Caring for ‘the person behind the patient’ is what drives Maastricht students Sjim Romme and Matthijs Bosveld, and this is also the name they gave the foundation they set up in 2015: Stichting Mens Achter de Patiënt (MAP). The foundation promotes people-oriented training for doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. Maastricht University (UM) has now given MAP permission to use the knowledge acquired in a pilot project at the university to continue developing the foundation independently.
After winning the UM student prize in 2016, Matthijs Bosveld and Sjim Romme took a gap year to develop their ‘person behind the patient’ idea into a teaching module consisting of three sessions. In the first, twelve students meet up with four experienced patients. They then form patient-student teams, and make a date for a second session, with the content and location determined by the patient. In the final session, the students reflect on what they have learned from the patients and from each other.
Teaching module
What started as a benevolent student initiative has grown into a serious teaching module on empathy in health care practice. More than 1000 students a year now complete the module, with participants from medical, health sciences and related programmes at UM, and since 2017 also students from the nursing, speech therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy programmes at the Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, and the nursing and health care programmes at VISTA College and Gilde Opleidingen. This year, 250 Belgian students will also be taking part, and the module is being tested at various other universities and colleges in the Netherlands.
UM is proud to have played a part in these developments. Now the university has officially transferred the knowledge to MAP, the foundation will be able to continue developing its socially relevant initiative independently, and to expand to other universities and colleges in the Netherlands and beyond.
Sjim Romme and Matthijs Bosveld
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