The Hospital Universitario Rey Juan Carlos—part of the Community of Madrid’s public health network, Sermas—and CEU San Pablo University (CEU USP) signed an agreement last week to develop an educational cooperation training project in the field of clinical internships. This will allow the university’s undergraduate and postgraduate students to complete practical training placements at the hospital in Móstoles.
The agreement was signed by Marta del Olmo, regional manager of Rey Juan Carlos Hospital, and Rosa Visiedo Claverol, Rector of CEU USP, at a ceremony described by all as an “enormously positive and inspiring step, both for the institutions and for the students, who are our country’s future healthcare professionals.” Among those in attendance were Drs. Jorge Short, Manuel Durán, and Raquel Barba—the hospital’s manager, director of teaching, and director of the Medical Department, respectively—and Tomás Chivato, Dean of the School of Medicine.
Specifically, the document establishes that students' clinical placements, also referred to as elective rotations, will be formally recognised as academic activities. These placements will provide students with first-hand experience of the daily work at the Hospital Rey Juan Carlos, facilitating their integration into a professional healthcare environment through observation and the acquisition of the attitudes and behaviours expected of healthcare professionals.
For CEU USP students, these placements will take the form of either curricular training placements (integrated into the study programme of a bachelor's or master's degree) or extracurricular placements, which students may undertake on a voluntary basis during their studies and which are related to their academic discipline.
To achieve this, the elective rotations for CEU USP students will act as curricular training placements. It will constitute academic activities that are part of the curriculum for the bachelor’s and/or master’s degree program or extracurricular placements corresponding to their degree program.
The agreement further establishes that each placement will be governed by a specific training plan defining both the educational objectives and the activities to be carried out. These objectives will take into account the basic, general, and specialised competences students are expected to acquire, while ensuring a direct connection between the placement activities and the academic content of their degree programme.
Students participating in the programme will be supervised by clinical placement coordinators from the relevant hospital departments and supported by a Director of Studies who will act as a liaison between the two institutions. In addition, placements will be overseen by qualified associate professors affiliated with the hospital and linked to the relevant university teaching programmes.
One of the initiative's key strengths is that CEU USP students will complete their clinical training under the guidance of the hospital's medical staff, many of whom are recognised among the leading professionals in their respective specialties at both national and international levels. Students will also have access to the hospital's highly advanced facilities, which include 18 operating theatres, four dedicated to major outpatient surgery, equipped with three Da Vinci robotic surgery systems and one ROSA robotic platform, as well as the world's first Philips Areta RT CT scanner.
Hospital Universitario Rey Juan Carlos has also been recognised for its commitment to quality and excellence, having achieved the European EFQM 5-Star accreditation, with a score approaching 600 points, and the Joint Commission International Gold Seal of Approval, one of the world's most demanding accreditations for patient safety and clinical quality in healthcare.