The first transnational meeting (The Kick-off Meeting) took place on January 21st-22nd, 2021 in an online format, agreed by all partners and justified by the COVID-19 restrictions. The meeting was organized by “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania (CDUMP). During the two days, there were 25 participants.
The aim of the meeting was to present an overview of the project, as well as to discuss within the Partnership the next steps that should be achieved regarding the project organization, the outputs, partners’ roles and responsibilities in the implementation process. In the first day, the agenda comprised an introduction made by Ovidiu Popa-Velea (the Project’s Coordinator) about (1) burnout in health care professionals and the necessity to prevent burnout in medical students and allied health students; (2) a detailed overview of the project, and (3) an overview of the timeline of the activities in the project (the Gantt Diagram).
CDUMP opened the first session, by providing detailed information about IO1-The Burnout Manual-pocket edition. The discussions around IO1 were focused on its structure, format, the working methodology, and the division of work within the Partnership. A series of conclusions were commonly agreed upon: (1) the content of the Burnout Manual should be based on a comprehensive search of the literature, which will take the shape of a thematic review and, optionally, of a systematic review; (2) the print format will be B6 and will also include images and case studies; (3) beside the Introduction, the Manual will comprise three distinct chapters: Diagnosis, Prevention and Interventions of burnout, with relevant examples at the individual and organizational levels. The second day of the meeting included separate sessions for the next intellectual outputs of the project, presented by their leading partners (IO2-VITECO; IO3-University of Nicosia and IO4 National School of Public Health). During this day, University of Murcia and Lusofona University (COFAC) presented the training events of the project. On this day, two separate sessions were dedicated to the dissemination and the evaluation of the project’s results.
During the meeting, the next steps of the project have been discussed, in accordance with its established milestones. The training provided by the Lusofona University (COFAC) was voted to take place in November 2022, while the decision about its provider was left to be decided later. The dissemination Coordinator, Trakia University presented the instruments and the indicators that need to be addressed and agreed upon, in order to build the social media pages and to monitor the press releases about the project. A distinct point was made and further discussed about a very important dissemination instrument – the official website of the project. At the end of the meeting, the Coordinator of the evaluation activities within the project, namely the University of Murcia, has sent to all Partners an invitation to fill in an online questionnaire, in order to measure the level of satisfaction regarding the information received during the Kick-off Meeting. According to the Partners’ opinions, the TPM was highly successful in terms of the logistic preparations, the relevance of the topics addressed, the clarity of the next steps to be undertaken, the achievement of the meeting goals, the discussion sessions, and the opportunities of the Participants to express their opinions and influence decisions. However, it needed more engagement between the Participants during the activities and discussions, as well as between the Coordinator and the Participants.