The cooperative movement at the service of social medicine
Once again this year, Assistència Sanitària has held a diploma ceremony as part of its Scholarship Programme for Healthcare Professionals, which this academic year 2024-25 is reaching its seventeenth edition with a renewed commitment to the promotion of specialised training in the field of healthcare.
During the ceremony, held in the auditorium of Hospital de Barcelona, 33 scholarships totalling 30,771.73 euros were awarded to master's and postgraduate students from a range of healthcare disciplines. This programme, which is well established and recognized across Spain as a pioneering and unique initiative sponsored by a private organization, received 215 applications this year from a wide range of fields such as nursing, medicine, psychology, physiotherapy, pharmacology and dietetics.
The most numerous group among scholarship recipients are nursing professionals (45%), followed by psychology (15%), biomedical sciences (12%) and medicine (9%), among others. The master’s and postgraduate courses taken by the beneficiaries cover a wide range of fields, including surgical, paediatric and emergency nursing specialities, as well as programmes in clinical nutrition, biomedicine, general and health psychology, and hospital management, among many others.
At the ceremony, Dr. Ignacio Orce, President of Asistencia Sanitaria, highlighted in his speech the value of this initiative in a "healthcare world in which resources are chronically scarce, and which demands discipline and vocation on the part of professionals, whose efforts make meeting our citizen’s healthcare needs possible". The keynote academic lecture, with the title "Nursing in 21st Century Healthcare", was delivered by Natàlia Mimó, Director of Nursing at Hospital de Barcelona.
With a well-established track record since 2008, this programme has received a total of 4,513 applications and has awarded a total of 531 scholarships, adding up to an overall investment of nearly 498,000 euros. These figures are proof of the size and impact of a project that is recognised by the medical and academic community for its transparency and the added value that comes from the fact that it is sponsored by a physician-led organisation.
This scholarship programme reflects the commitment of Assistència Sanitària to scientific progress, lifelong learning and professional excellence at a particularly sensitive time for the healthcare sector, when initiatives such as this one take on particular relevance in the face of job insecurity and social and economic challenges.
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