Vårdsvenska - Swedish for Russian health care personnel

Partners: Finland (coordinator)

For some time now, The Swedish Culture Foundation has studied how they could offer internet-based courses for foreign health care personnel. A possible target group for the development project has turned out to be the Russian-speaking health care personnel who are interested in working in the health care for the elderly in Finland. 

The Vårdsvenska website is free of charge, and contains healthcare-related material that the nurses can use to study Swedish independently. In addition to Swedish courses, the website contains information on how to apply for work in Finland, links to official pages, information about the Finnish-Swedish community and the elderly care services in Finland. 

With the help of a CV-tool, you can send applications directly to hospitals, nursing homes, and other care facilities. Registered users may create an applicant profile through which the employers may contact the individual, and there will be a list of job openings on the website. There is material and language exercises available in Swedish, Russian, Finnish, and in English. 

A free mobile application; Health Lingo, (for iPhone, iPad and Android) was also created within the project. The quiz application contains Health Care vocabulary in 4 languages: http://health-lingo.vardsvenska.fi/healthlingo/healthlingo?cmd=home

The project started during the early fall of 2009 and the website was launched in the beginning of 2012: www.vardsvenska.fi and https://www.facebook.com/vardsvenska?ref=hl