From November 8 to 12, 2021, the Faculty of Health Sciences of Palacky University in Olomouc organized its first International Week of Collaboration in Education and Research, attended by experts in nursing and physiotherapy from universities in the UK, Finland, and the USA. The aim of the event was to support the development of cooperation with foreign universities, to allow students of doctoral programs to discuss their research with foreign experts, and to give all interested parties the opportunity to become familiar with the issue of publishing from the point of view of foreign experts.
Professor Alison Steven and Dr. Jane Greaves from Northumbria University in the UK, Professor Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen from the University of Eastern Finland, and Associate Professor Kelley Anderson from the Georgetown University in the US accepted the invitation to the event. Moravian University in the USA was represented by Dr. John Mikovits and Dr. James Scifers.
On the first day of the visit, foreign guests got acquainted with the history of Olomouc, Palacky University and the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS). Together with representatives of the FHS management, the participants discussed topics which the faculty focuses on, and the possibility of deepening the previously established cooperation, especially in the field of nursing, physiotherapy, and doctoral studies. As part of the rich event program, foreign guests had the opportunity to see the workplace of the Olomouc University Hospital, where FHS students perform their professional practice. They visited the 2nd. Internal clinic of gastroenterology and geriatrics, where Ph.D. Ondřej Urban, the head of the clinic, showed the operations of the clinic, as well as highlighted some technical parameters of this state-of-the-art facility in the Olomouc University Hospital. Another workplace that foreign guests visited was the Rehabilitation Department.
The international week also included a doctoral students conference, which took place on November 10, 2021. Its central theme was "Study design of the dissertation research studies". Doctoral students of nursing study program presented here both the research design of their research, as well as the partial results of their research studies. In the workshop that followed, the students received feedback from foreign experts on their presentations, while foreign guests very positively valued the quality and level of the issues being solved. On Thursday, September 11, 2001, foreign guests lectured on publishing in prestigious international professional journals. The lectures were followed by a panel discussion, in which foreign guests talked about their experience in publishing and reviewing professional articles.
At the end of the week, a meeting took place, where foreign guests with representatives of the FHS management and representatives of some faculty institutes jointly discussed the possibilities of cooperation in the field of research, study, organization of joint conferences for PhD students and visits by academics. Foreign guests took the international week very positively, which is why the FHS management plans to follow it up with similar events in the coming years.
The International Week at FHS was financed by the IP Internacionalizace 2021 program.
Helena Kisvetrová, Vice-Dean for Science Research and Doctoral Programmes
Petra Mandysová, Vice-Dean for International Relations and Internationalisation
