The increasing frequency of incidents involving hazardous materials (HazMat) encompassing a wide range of chemical and biological environmental contaminants shows a need to teach environmental toxicology, public health and emergency preparedness to future health care professionals to protect the public. Serious HazMat incidents present an enormous challenge in the health care sector and may involve national and international health service collaboration requiring specific training. The development of educational programmes for health care professionals to manage serious HazMat incidents is needed and this should be harmonised within the EU. Moreover, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries in conjunction with the public health sector are demanding professionals with specific knowledge to respond to HazMat events and deal with environments seriously impacted by chemical or biological incidents that can threaten human health. Future professionals will need specific knowledge to implement different intervention strategies for health protection. Our teaching innovation group is developing a series of novel teaching sessions including short courses, lectures, workshops and tutorials, to train undergraduate and postgraduate health science students in these topics in two EU Universities: University of Alcalá (UAH, Spain) and De Montfort University (DMU, UK). We are using guidelines from organisations such as The Environmental Protection Agency and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US, the UK National Health Service, as well experience from the field gained from the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Additionally, a combination of different pedagogic approaches are being used, e.g. "peer teaching" (Benè and Bergus, 2014) or ProblemBased Learning (PBL) to create a variety of teaching materials and sessions. These pedagogic approaches were adapted for a diverse student cohort with limited knowledge of environmental toxicology, emergency preparedness and risk assessment. Specifically, we created a specialised short training course in environmental toxicology for pharmacists at UAH (Peña-Fernández et al., 2015), which was improved for the 2015/16 academic session using students' feedback from the previous course. This was also delivered to undergraduate (BMedSci. Medical Sciences) and postgraduate (MSc. Advanced Biomedical Science) students at DMU. The main objective of these teaching sessions was to provide the students with basic knowledge to implement an intervention programme to protect the public in the aftermath of a HazMat incident or a pandemic outbreak. All the teaching sessions and materials were highly interactive, requiring a high level of participation and preparation from the students due to their short duration. Despite their short duration we observed high levels of student engagement/satisfaction (e.g. nearly 100% from pharmacists attending the training course at UAH this year). The novel teaching sessions created at both universities could effectively provide students with pub...

A novel short training in environmental toxicology, risk assessment and decontamination was created in the specialty of "Industrial Pharmacy and Galenic" at the University of Alcalá (UAH, Spain) in 2013-14 to provide postgraduate pharmacists with basic skills, tools and knowledge to decontaminate environments affected by chemical accidents. These students completed a highly specialised research-led workshop (training) to decontaminate an open water system affected by a chemical industry spill accident using the "UK Recovery Handbook for Chemical Incidents" (UKRHCI; [1]). The UKRHCI has been developed by Public Health England (PHE) and includes innovative methodology to select appropriate decontamination options and techniques to tackle environments impacted by chemicals. This training was modified in 2015/16 to introduce the innovative PHE virtual resource "Chemical Recovery Navigation Tool" (CRNT; [2]) that follows the same methodology and resources described in the UKRHCI. Comprehensive student feedback, including a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), was collected to investigate the changes implemented in our training. The modifications undertaken raised high levels of student satisfaction. Briefly, 100% students reported that the CRNT facilitated the understanding of the training and the selection of recovery options to respond to the case scenario proposed. Students described as a strength that the workshop was very interesting, interactive and novel and its execution in English (as the training was delivered at the Spanish university UAH). The possibility of working in environmental toxicology and decontamination was described as an opportunity. Students highlighted as weaknesses and threat its low relation with the pharmaceutical industry and brief duration (5 hours). This academic course (2016/17), a comprehensive modification has been undertaken at De Montfort University (DMU, UK) to adapt this novel training to a range of different human health science programmes, including master's students attending the MSc. Advanced Biomedical Science programme at DMU and undergraduate Pharmacy students at the University of San Pablo CEU (USP-CEU, Spain). An Erasmus+ mobility grant for academics was satisfactorily used to validate this short training at USP-CEU earlier in 2017. A specific feedback-questionnaire distributed in both academic arenas provided the following results: 85.7% (USP-CEU) and 50% (DMU) neither agree nor disagree with a statement about enjoyment of the workshop provided. 83% of the master's students (DMU) and 86% of undergraduate students (USP-CEU) reported that they learnt how to select appropriate recovery options to decontaminate the open water and urban environments proposed. Finally, 42.9% (57.1% neither agree nor disagree) and 83% of students recommended the incorporation of more, similar training in each programme respectively (USP-CEU and DMU). The short training described in this paper has shown to be effective in improving students' knowledge and s...

We are performing curriculum modifications on the first year BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science module "Basic Microbiology" (De Montfort University, UK) to increase students' knowledge of basic medical parasitology and infectious diseases, so these students can acquire the necessary skills to tackle their final degree module "Medical Microbiology". Following student feedback on a novel short intervention in 2017/18 to promote awareness about human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), we have created an engaging workshop session to cover not only HIV but also the opportunistic infections that can affect HIV patients that have developed acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and how to prevent them. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effectiveness of the improved workshop developed and to collect students' impressions to perform further modifications if needed. Briefly, students were required to develop public health measures for HIV positive patients with two different degrees of immunosuppression (i.e. with CD4+ T cells in peripheral blood above and below 200 cells/μl) to prevent exposure and infection from opportunistic pathogens such as Cryptosporidium spp., Toxoplasma gondii or Pneumocystis jirovecii from: a) sexual exposures; b) intravenous drug use; b) environment and work; c) food and water; d) foreign travel. Students, following evidence-based public health methodology, tailored their measures or interventions using the most up-to-date information reported in the literature regarding HIV chemoprophylaxis and recent guidelines published by US Department of Health and Human Services on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Interventions were critically analysed with all students in the last 20 min. of the workshop, which was repeated several times due to the number of students (n=203). The objectives of this workshop were evaluated by careful analysis of a specific feedback questionnaire (n=46 out of 203) voluntarily completed by students at the end of the workshop. The questionnaire showed the following feedback: 80.4% (65.2% agreed; 15.2% strongly agreed) indicated that they learnt how to identify public health interventions; and 95.7% (56.5% agreed; 39.1% strongly agreed) indicated that they would be able to establish measures to reduce HIV transmission and prevent opportunistic infections. Additionally, 95.7% (39.1% agreed; 56.5% strongly agreed) indicated that the workshop helped them to understand the relevance of local and global interventions. Finally, 97.8% of responders considered that the content (52.2% agreed; 45.7% strongly agreed) and duration (60.9% agreed; 37% strongly agreed) of the workshop was appropriate; and 89.1% (58.7% agreed; 30.4% strongly agreed) and 73.9% (41.3% agreed; 32.6% strongly agreed) enjoyed and were satisfied with the workshop provided, respectively. In conclusion, the improved workshop developed would seem to be effective for promoting sexual and public health education to minimise opportunistic pathogen infections in relevant patients when delivered to students with a ...

Agents involved in biological incidents and outbreaks of infection can spread easily, so response teams are required to quickly implement a recovery plan to decontaminate and restore the environment impacted by these incidents to minimise public risks. A group of academics at De Montfort University (DMU, UK), with support from first responders during the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, are developing appropriate training to provide basic skills so human health science students can respond to biological incidents. Following the competences identified by the European Commission, we have created key competences for these students based on the core skills that any medical first responder to biological emergencies should have. To provide students with the key competences related to environmental planning, we have created specific training that consisted of a 2 hours practical plus theory related to emerging diseases and the international response provided to tackle the Ebola pandemic. The practical component was a research-led workshop to develop a complete protection and recovery plan to respond to an outbreak of infection by Cyclospora cayetanensis in an urban area. Students used the novel methodology developed by Public Health England ["UK Recovery Handbook for Biological Incidents" (Pottage et al., 2015)] [1] to select appropriate options or techniques to protect and recover the affected environment, according to the physiological characteristics of the biological agent/microorganism involved and the environment impacted. Critical thinking and discussion is also needed to select recovery options (R.O.), e.g. use of chlorine-based decontamination liquids as part of the R.O. "reactive liquids" will have limited efficacy as oocysts of Cyclospora are resistant to these. After successful testing of the training with postgraduate students, we introduced it in a level 6 module in the DMU degree programme BMedSci in Medical Science in 2016/17 (n=24). A small proportion of these BMedSci students reported that they did not enjoy (13.4%) or were not satisfied (20%) with the training provided, which could be attributed to the fact that the topic of the training (environmental sciences) was not of direct interest for these students who are studying a degree more related to medicine. However, despite the short duration of the training, students were able to tailor an appropriate response with the resources and information provided (physiological characteristics and a literature review on decontamination/inactivation techniques for Cyclospora was provided to overcome time constraints). Specifically, 73.3% indicated that they gained some public health prevention/preparedness knowledge against a biological incident; 80% highlighted that they learnt how to establish some public health interventions; and 60% learnt how to tailor a recovery plan. A few students (20%) had difficulties with the recovery concepts and the interpretation of the physiological characteristics, which may be attributed to limited background knowledge of microbiology ...