About us
The Pentalfa project started off in 1998 as an initiative of the Faculty of Medicine and was extended later in cooperation with the Flemish hospital network. The Pentalfa project represents interactive postgraduate long distance education. The goal is to offer this postgraduate education of the Faculty of Medicine in Leuven in an interactive way in every region in Flanders. Therefore a connection is created through the most advanced devices for videoconferencing between Leuven and five different regions in Flanders, one in every province. This way, doctors can follow the same program each in their own region and from different locations spread around Flanders, and have a conversation with the other participants as well.
Each year Pentalfa provides a multidisciplinary program of diverse disciplines of Medicine. Pentalfa tries to contact a broad group of graduated doctors and/or experts from the public health sector. The sessions’ subjects are very broad; from acute allergic reactions of children or complications in breast cancer therapy to malnutrition in hospital.
A rotation system defines which hospitals partake in which sessions. Overall there are 25 sessions every academic year that each take place on a Thursday night.
The educational quality is guaranteed by the scientific coordination group that composes the program. This group is formed by the representatives of the K.U.Leuven, coming from different disciplines of the U.Z. Leuven and the participating hospitals of the Flemish hospital network.
During each session four or five guest speakers, each of them specialists in their own discipline, give an interactive presentation. These presentations take place in the Pentalfa auditory in Leuven at ‘Onderwijs en navorsing’ on the Campus Gasthuisberg of the Faculty of Medicine of the K.U.Leuven. Sometimes a presentation can be organized from one of the guest locations. A central moderator coordinates the session. Each evening is concluded by a panel discussion between speakers and participants on all different locations that are put on screen by various cameras. This in order to grade up the interactive aspect. All of these discussions are coordinated by the moderators. The participants can follow everything through two video screens imbedded in one, one showing the speaker, the other showing the audience. Another screen shows visual aids like for instance PowerPoint presentations, graphs or movie fragments.
The whole session can be reviewed through streaming or podcast at home. A very convenient aspect, because when one has missed a certain session, one doesn’t miss out on all of the information.
