AIDIR Unit
Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
The Nursing Care Teaching and Research Unit (AIDIR) is a project driven by UIC Barcelona’s Department of Nursing which reflects its commitment to society and nursing students.
AIDIR is a teaching innovation project that promotes cooperation between the university and the professional world, and guarantees excellence in terms of knowledge, skills and care leadership for future nurses. It consists of physical spaces (clinics) for interacting and learning within a social and clinical environment.
The current Nursing Teaching and Research Care Units are understood as dedicated education units where students have a leading role training and educating the community, patients and their relatives and/or carers, under the supervision of a mentor or tutor from the unit. These units are a practical space where students have the opportunity to carry out new initiatives in terms of health education.
Since they were set up, both AIDIR Units have been highly successful, both on the account of the patients and families cared for, and of the students who have undertaken their practicums at these units.
Objectives of the unit
- Promote health, empower and increase control over the health of people in the community in terms of self-care and self-management; improving and enhancing the development of behavioral, emotional, social and cognitive skills necessary to maintain a healthy lifestyle through actions led by nursing students.
- Empowering nursing students, enhancing leadership and health education competence contributing to nursing with greater social commitment and more competence in general terms.
- Implement Health Coaching techniques in education to improve health training (literacy), autonomy and self-care for individuals, families and community groups.
- Develop research in the area of health promotion and self-care of the population, as well as research in the teaching field on leadership in nursing care.
Mission, vision and values
Mission
To provide a service to the community, based on health education to enhance the autonomy and self-care of the population, at the same time training students in new nursing roles, encouraging leadership, research and the development of new projects.
Vision
Strengthen nursing leadership in health promotion and disease prevention through the development of new projects that generate own knowledge.
Values
The person and the family as the center of the healthcare system. The Nursing professional as the center of our mission. Nurses as main agents in the leadership of care.
Teaching Methodology
The teaching methodology implemented in these units is key, and for this reason it represents the innovative differential element compared to other scenarios of conventional practices. AIDIR is based on:
- Tutoring and monitoring tutor/mentor throughout the duration of the practicum: facilitator role
- The student leader of the unit during his stay
- Through cooperative and reflective learning
- Techniques and care based on the best scientific evidence
All this through service learning, which maintains a relationship of reciprocity between the contribution of academic success and the service of health education. Achieving that learning enhances service, but that service to the community of meaning in learning.