Utilizing Co-Creative Principles to Develop an E-Learning Platform for Interprofessional Training on Tinnitus: The Erasmus+ Project Tin-TRAC

Tinnitus treatment, diagnosis and management across Europe varies significantly. The lack of national clinical guidelines for tinnitus management in most European countries and the absence of a common language across all disciplines involved is reflected in the diversification of healthcare practices. Interprofessional Training for Tinnitus Researchers and Clinicians (Tin-TRAC) is an Erasmus+ project that aims to develop common educational ground in the form of an e-Learning platform, co-created by patients, researchers and clinicians, which is able to unify tinnitus diagnosis and treatment strategies across Europe. A pan-European thematic educational platform integrating the best practices and latest research achievements with regard to tinnitus diagnosis and management has the potential to act as a facilitator of the reduction of interdisciplinary and interregional practice diversification. A detailed analysis of the educational needs of clinicians and researchers across disciplines will be followed by the co-creative development of the curriculum. Reusable learning objects will incorporate the training contents and will be integrated in an open e-Learning platform. Tin-TRAC envisions that its output will answer the need to create a common language across the clinicians and researchers of different disciplines that are involved in tinnitus management, and reduce patients’ prolonged suffering, non-adherence and endless referral trajectories

A survey-based assessment of attitudes and needs regarding tinnitus healthcare among patients and healthcare professionals in Europe

Despite good agreement of national guidelines for the assessment and treatment of tinnitus, there is still substantial variation regarding tinnitus-related healthcare across Europe. In contrast to previous work, which has mainly focussed on the perspective of healthcare professionals, we here report the results of separate web-based surveys conducted with clinicians and researchers as well as tinnitus patients. These surveys were devised to obtain information about their respective attitudes and needs with respect to tinnitus healthcare, and to reveal possible interdisciplinary inconsistencies among clinicians and researchers. We mainly targeted participants from Germany, Cyprus, and Greece, the countries in which the institutions of the researchers involved in this project are based. Results showed, firstly, that the treatment satisfaction of the patients was overall more negative than that of the clinicians and researchers, and that the patients' treatment satisfaction did not depend on the number of different treatments they had received. Secondly, patients as well as clinicians and researchers indicated that they were interested in learning more about a variety of tinnitus-related topics, especially treatment strategies, with no marked differences between clinicians from different professional disciplines. This suggests similar tinnitus-specific educational needs in patients and healthcare professionals

Utilizing Co-Creative Principles to Develop an E-Learning Platform for Interprofessional Training on Tinnitus: The Erasmus+ Project Tin-TRAC

Tinnitus treatment, diagnosis and management across Europe varies significantly. The lack of national clinical guidelines for tinnitus management in most European countries and the absence of a common language across all disciplines involved is reflected in the diversification of healthcare practices. Interprofessional Training for Tinnitus Researchers and Clinicians (Tin-TRAC) is an Erasmus+ project that aims to develop common educational ground in the form of an e-Learning platform, co-created by patients, researchers and clinicians, which is able to unify tinnitus diagnosis and treatment strategies across Europe. A pan-European thematic educational platform integrating the best practices and latest research achievements with regard to tinnitus diagnosis and management has the potential to act as a facilitator of the reduction of interdisciplinary and interregional practice diversification. A detailed analysis of the educational needs of clinicians and researchers across disciplines will be followed by the co-creative development of the curriculum. Reusable learning objects will incorporate the training contents and will be integrated in an open e-Learning platform. Tin-TRAC envisions that its output will answer the need to create a common language across the clinicians and researchers of different disciplines that are involved in tinnitus management, and reduce patients' prolonged suffering, non-adherence and endless referral trajectories