KU Leuven Constructs New Skills Center for Students and Healthcare Professionals
Today the foundation stone for STEPS, KU Leuven’s new skills center for students and healthcare professionals, was laid on the Gasthuisberg campus. This building will provide space for innovative learning environments and advanced simulation technologies for Biomedical Sciences Group students and healthcare professionals. With this, the university is taking an important step in expanding and strengthening its educational infrastructure for healthcare education and training.
Over the past decade, the number of students in Biomedical Sciences (Medicine, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences) has increased significantly. To ensure that all these students can respond smoothly to the rapidly changing healthcare context and needs, the university is committed to numerous initiatives for educational innovation and the interprofessional training of students. Continuing education is also an absolute requirement to ensure the bridge between the professional field and the academic world.
One of the important pillars of this approach is skills education in the courses. That is why the university is building a multidisciplinary and high-performance skills center to create a realistic learning environment that prepares students as best as possible for the real workplace. This project was called STEPS, which stands for Skills Training Education Proficiency Surgery. This project will be housed in part of the existing Education & Research 2 building and in a new building, the foundation stone of which was laid today. The new building is expected to be ready by the start of the 2026-2027 academic year.
In this center, not only students from the faculties of Medicine, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences will receive further training. Healthcare workers from UZ Leuven and healthcare staff from the Flemish Hospital Network of KU Leuven will also be able to come here for training in the context of permanent education.
The STEPS building is divided into different zones for various types of training, such as communication training, rooms for station tests, resuscitation training, self-learning stations, complex simulators for technical skills, simulated complex care environments, and rooms with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). Each zone is designed to support specific learning objectives, from basic instrumental skills to high-fidelity simulation education. With this center, KU Leuven also wants to respond to the need for continuous retraining and further training of healthcare workers, a need that became once again clear during the corona crisis.
At the crossroads of education, research and healthcare
The location of the STEPS building on the Health Sciences Campus Gasthuisberg makes it a central hub for education, research and healthcare. This campus, where KU Leuven and UZ Leuven come together, offers an integrated environment where academic and professional training in the healthcare sector reinforce each other. The location of STEPS is not coincidental, the skills center literally and figuratively makes the connection between existing education and care facilities, making seamless integration of theoretical and practical education possible.
Sustainability and flexibility are the common threads running through the design of the new STEPS building, with a structure that must last more than 100 years but can also be adapted to changing technological and pedagogical developments. The fossil-free building will have a high-performance audiovisual system, wide corridors for the transport of materials and a flexible space that can quickly respond to new needs and functions.