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This cross-sectional survey study evaluates the influence of international observerships organised by the coalition of healthcare professionals from academic institutions—the Ukrainian Alliance for Medical Exchange and Development (UA-MED)—on the professional development, knowledge transfer and clinical practice improvement of Ukrainian healthcare professionals during the war.
A total of 263 international observerships were facilitated for 204 Ukrainian medical professionals across the institutions in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia during 2022–2024. To assess the impact of these observerships, a survey was administered focusing on overall satisfaction, procedural knowledge gained and challenges faced when implementing new techniques on return. The primary outcome was the success score, defined as a composite score of implementing new procedures, initiating quality improvement projects and knowledge dissemination efforts.
A total of 128 medical professionals from 45 Ukrainian institutions who completed 138 observerships in 27 institutions abroad participated in the survey (response rate of 62.7%). Observers varied by profession: surgeons (32.8%), radiation oncologists (14.8%), medical oncologists (11.7%), anaesthesiologists (11.7%) and others. Observerships lasted a median of 4 weeks; 74.1% included conference attendance. The average success and satisfaction scores were 6.5/10 and 9.3/10, respectively.
The majority (92.7%) reported a shift in perception of how to practise medicine and 75.5% implemented new procedures on returning to Ukraine. Encouraged to disseminate knowledge, participants provided informal training to colleagues (67.3%), prepared presentations for their institutions (65.5%) and national conferences (32.7%), incorporated learnt materials into educational lectures (39.1%) and engaged in all the activities above (15.5%).
The international observerships played an important role in enhancing the reported skills and knowledge of Ukrainian healthcare professionals during the war. Improvements were reported in clinical practice, medical education and the implementation of new procedures. The success of these observerships underscores the potential for similar programmes in other low-income and middle-income countries/upper-middle-income countries.
Paediatric vulval lichen sclerosus (VLS) is a chronic disease with distressing symptoms and severe consequences when left untreated. Majority of existing data on pathophysiology and treatment is based on studies conducted among adult patients. Whereas the course of VLS, its symptomatology and prognosis are distinct to some extent in paediatric and adolescent patients as compared with adults. The purpose of this scoping review is to systematically examine what symptoms of VLS are typical of paediatric and adolescent patients, how often specific signs and symptoms are reported in the literature, if there are differences between paediatric and adolescent patients and what could be the implication of such differences.
This scoping review will adopt the methodology for Joanna Briggs Institute scoping reviews and will consider studies that include female patients aged 1–18, with VLS symptoms and signs with no exclusion based on ethnicity, comorbidity or previous history of treatment. Studies on any aspect of paediatric VLS, including pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment, which included patients and reported patients’ symptoms and signs, will be considered eligible. There will be no geographical or cultural limitation applied in relation to this scoping review. The search will include Embase, Academic Search Premier, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Health Source, Ovid Embase, Ovid Medline, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science Principal Collection. A critical synthesis and results will be presented in the final review as tables and accompanying narrative summary.
Ethical approval is not required for this review. To date, no systematic approaches were undertaken to classify symptoms of the VLS that would aid in formulating disease severity criteria adequate for the paediatric population. We believe that the results of this review will facilitate the development of disease severity scales that could aid in intraindividual and interindividual comparability, both in real-life settings and clinical trials.
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