by the EAN Guideline Production Group
As of 2023 EAN has taken over the CoCoCare programme which was originally launched as an Erasmus project in 2018 by the Maastricht University, the Netherlands, spearheaded by Marian Majoie. CoCoCare is a comprehensive programme which entails e-Learning modules, training on the job sections, and webinars throughout the year with the following objectives:
- To teach EAN members how to develop and implement high quality, evidence-based cost-conscious guidelines
- To eventually involve more EAN members in EAN guideline development and consequently improve the quality of EAN guidelines.
Applicants to the programme were carefully selected by the EAN Guideline Production Group (GPG) and were invited to complete four e-Learning modules as preparation to the kick-off workshop which took place on 30 June 2023 at the EAN Congress in Budapest, Hungary.
The workshop was opened by Marian Majoie followed by a short introduction on the importance of CoCoCare for EAN Guidelines by the Co-Chairs of the Maurizio Leone and Joao Costa.
Jessica Beltran of Sant Pau Institute of Biomedical Research (Spain), provided an introduction to clinical guidelines, followed by a session on the rating of certainty of evidence by Gerald Gartlehner and Andreea Dobrescu, both from the University for Continuing Education Krems (Austria). Jessica Beltran and her colleague Ana Carolina Nunes then talked about how to move forward from evidence to decision making and on high-quality patient centred care, respectively. Silvia Evers and Ghislaine van Mastrigt of the Maastricht University (Netherlands) held a training session on cost-conscious care, followed by a talk on the implementation in medical practice by Roberta James of NHS (UK). The whole workshop was then topped off by an evaluation round by the mastermind behind the project – Marian Majoie.
The students of the project are generally young neurologists who are still in training or have shortly finished their residencies in the recent past and are interested in developing and generating EAN guidelines. Initial feedback from the trainers was exceedingly positive – the students were very engaged in the exercises and showed enthusiasm, eagerness, and passion in the presented topics and in the project as a whole.
After the successful kick-off workshop, the students will be engaging in Training-on-the-Job activities accompanied by regular webinars organised by the trainers. Graduates of this year’s CoCoCare programme will be able to present a poster at the EAN Congress 2024 in Helsinki followed by a graduation ceremony.
We wish all the students the very best!
