Congratulations to friends and partners of Phase II of the project 

On 14 July 2023, our project announced that it was looking for higher education institutions for long-term cooperation – pilot institutions. Sixteen brave medical universities and institutes took the risk to trust us and jointly implement activities that will help to develop quality changes in education, rethink approaches to working with students, comprehensively improve the competencies of future healthcare professionals, and more. All of them knew it was a competitive basis, so not all eventually became the same pilot institution.

“Higher medical education institutions have gained autonomy. However, the transition from a long tradition of working in the style of “pointing out problems from above and handing down solutions and plans” to the fact that the institution defines its goals, finds ways to implement them, and crystallizes points of differentiation is rather slow and difficult. Therefore, developing institutions’ capacity and autonomy was the framework within which our project worked in the first phase. We have seen that universities and academies are also gaining incentives and tools for their development through strengthened horizontal links with each other (including on the platforms created by the project). Therefore, in the second phase, we aim to involve those institutions that, on the one hand, already have their unique achievements but are also open to change and cooperation,” says Tetiana Chernysh, Head of the Implementation Office of the Ukrainian-Swiss Medical Education Development Project.

The HEIs filled in the application form, and our selection committee studied and evaluated their applications. Then, there were meetings with the institutions selected in the first round, discussing the vision of participation in the project with the administration of the educational institutions.

“Selecting partner institutions for Phase II of the project was a big challenge. It was clear that each applicant tried not to impress the committee, but, having analyzed their institution well, they spoke frankly about the challenges and their vision of overcoming them. We in the team value transparency and sincerity and believe that shared values help us work effectively and improve – and these are the preferred applications. I welcome the new institutions to the Ukrainian-Swiss project’s large team and promise it will not be easy. Still, it will be interesting, exciting, and motivating!” sums up Olena Ihnashchuk, Medical Education Coordinator of the Ukrainian-Swiss Project “Medical Education Development.” Olena communicated with the participants for months, coordinated the selection process, and will continue to support the pilot institutions.

After all the stages of selection, we are finally announcing the 11 pilot institutions of Phase II of the project selected on a competitive basis:

• Bukovinian State Medical University
• Zhytomyr Medical Institute
• Zaporizhzhia State University of Medicine and Pharmacy
• Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University
• Andrey Krupynskyi Lviv Medical Academy
• Danylo Halytskyi Lviv National Medical University
• Bogomolets National Medical University
• Sumy State University
• Ternopil National Medical University, named after I.Y. Gorbachevsky
• Uzhhorod National University
• Kharkiv National Medical University

We will also implement project activities with partners: National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Dobrobut Academy, and Rivne Regional Hospital. 

We have four years of intense cooperation ahead and joint ambitious plans, which automatically means a lot of work and responsibility. Read more about each institution in the next issue of our newsletter.