Avans+, Yomema and Zorggroep Drenthe have every confidence in the cooperation and the quality of the training for Indonesian nurses. The collaboration arose from two goals: to bring Indonesian healthcare to a higher level and at the same time to offer a (temporary) solution for the continuing high and growing demand for healthcare workers in the Netherlands. The program is one of the many promising initiatives that can contribute to this.
The students are intensively supervised during the course to ensure that the chance of success is as high as possible. As with every Bachelor’s degree programme, this program also shows that not all students are able to meet the program requirements in the first year. Unfortunately, they must then terminate their education. This is very annoying for these students and has a lot of impact. Especially for this group, because this means that they have to return to Indonesia. We can well imagine that these students look back on their time in the Netherlands with mixed feelings. We deeply regret that.
In November 2021, 3 pilot groups with a total of 64 students started their training. A lot of time and energy has gone into the design and set-up. This is now bearing fruit; 61 of the total of 64 students will have completed the foundation year of the program in 2022. These 61 students have subsequently entered the regular ‘Bachelor of Nursing’ programme, 5 students have dropped out of their program in this second year. This means that the dropout rate for this program has so far been 12.5 percent.
Compared to a ‘normal’ Nursing programme, where the average drop-out rate during the first year is 25 to 30 percent, this is much lower. Module evaluations also show that these international students rate the education above average: relevance and applicability of the modules and teachers are scored with 7.5 to 8.0 across all groups, a result that we are proud of.
The training is relatively new. The first year was a year of learning and discovery for the students, but certainly also for the collaborating parties. As mentioned, we have put a lot of time and energy into setting it up. The supervision by the internship companies meets the standards of the HBO curriculum. During the first year, we noticed that some things could be improved, and we addressed that. An example of this is the design of the mentorship, which has since been further developed. We comply with laws and regulations and have every confidence in the outcome of the investigation by the Labor Inspectorate.