Continuing education LAS Principles applicable in Region Flanders
Each staff member must, according to his or her position, have followed a predefined number of hours of continuing education spread over the previous three years.
Trial leaders and active participants follow at least 24 hours of continuing education initiatives per three years, of which at least 12 hours are obtained by participating in training courses, that are de facto accredited or with a quality label issued by a quality control committee (see section ‘Quality of the continuing education’), and possibly supplemented with extra hours that can be obtained through or during other activities, namely:
- Following internal training courses
- The internal or external acquisition of skills
- Participating in seminars, workshops, or conferences with a clear animal-related focus1
- Publishing experimental animal publications at a rate of maximum 4 hours per peer reviewed publication2
Elementary and special animal caretakers follow at least 12 hours of training every 3 years, whereby fully internally organized continuing education initiatives are possible.
More information can be found in the attached note
1 Events with a clear animal-related focus have a theme that is animal-related and goes beyond merely reporting on experiments with laboratory animals in a scientific context. For example, a symposium entitled “Animal models in current cancer research” is eligible, but a symposium entitled “Tumour immunology”, which also deals with experiments using laboratory animals, is not. It goes without saying that the events that focus on 3R, alternatives and complementarity between in vitro and in vivo are pre-eminently covered by the term “with a clear animal-related focus”.
2 An “experimental publication” is to be understood in the same sense as the above footnote
