We are very proud to announce that researchers from Societal Participation and Health (SPH) received a grant from the ZonMw call “Innovatieve Arbozorg” to develop and evaluate a Toolbox for occupational physicians focused on guiding interns.
Jeroen Croes, Mariska de Wit, Felicia Los and Han Anema have received a grant of 250,000 euros from ZonMW for the development of a Toolbox for occupational physicians that can assist them in offering internship placements.
Currently, there is a shortage of occupational physicians in the Netherlands. Therefore, it is important to inform and inspire medical students about this profession through internships, in order to increase the inflow of new occupational physicians. However, the number of internship placements is too low to adequately guide enough students. In collaboration with various faculties, the NVAB, NSPOH, SGBO, IOSG, KoM, and OVAL, we started in 2022 with the development of a Toolbox to support occupational physicians in setting up internship placements and guiding interns, with the aim of creating more and high-quality internship placements.
With help of the grant from ZonMW during this project, the Toolbox will be expanded, evaluated in a pilot study by both occupational physicians and students, and further implemented in practice. This is expected to lead to a higher inflow of residents into the occupational physician training program.