There are some things you can’t learn from books. Universities know this well—they always set aside part of the curriculum for hands-on work. But beyond knowledge and know-how, there’s a third dimension that’s rarely taught in a practical way: interpersonal skills. Yet listening to others and being able to convey a message are skills that can be learned! And play can be a powerful tool for transmitting this knowledge. 

The ideal approach would have involved having students interact with actor-patients, so they could get as close as possible to their future reality, but class sizes make such a system impossible. “So I decided to use role-playing exercises, in which students took turns playing the roles of both doctor and patient,” explains Hélène Givron. “The exercise was very well received by the students, who were essentially taking on the role of a doctor for the first time! And the literature showed that putting themselves in a patient’s shoes also helps develop their empathy.”

Each simulation is filmed, allowing students to review their performance and reflect on what they did and how to improve their communication. “This is a very important moment, which can have detrimental consequences for students if it isn’t led by properly trained individuals,” warns the psychologist. “Even though it’s just a simulation, it deeply immerses students in what will be their future profession. We mustn’t let any of them, faced with a poorly supervised debriefing, conclude that they’ll be a bad doctor.”

To avoid this situation, Hélène Givron helped develop an interuniversity training program specifically designed for simulation instructors: “The role model’s attitude is, in my view, very important, because students learn a great deal by imitation. It would therefore be somewhat absurd to teach them to be good listeners while we ourselves are being judgmental during a debriefing. We must embody what we teach.”

Due to its positive evaluation, this communication workshop is now mandatory for all third-year medical students. Using a simulated clinic designed to closely mirror reality, students first practice welcoming a new patient before tackling more complex situations. “We put them in very specific situations, such as managing a patient under intense stress or delivering bad news,” explains Hélène Givron. “The whole point is to teach them to hone their listening skills and learn to read what patients aren’t saying by observing their nonverbal behavior.”

“This program has since been enhanced with an escape game, created by Milena Jarosik and Sophie Evrard from Hénallux University with the goal of raising students’ awareness about addressing domestic and spousal violence,” the psychologist continues. “The debriefing is led by practitioners in the field who can share their real-life experiences on this topic.”

Medical students aren’t the only ones to benefit from this type of teaching, by the way: “Pharmacy students have access to a teaching pharmacy, which allows them to gain hands-on experience interacting with patients,” explains Hélène Givron. “All role-playing exercises are also filmed, because we learn a lot by watching ourselves.”

And recently, thanks to a Punch project (Namur University Pedagogy in Transition) from the Faculty of Education and Training, and with the help of Christine Laurent, a public health physician and educational games specialist, the psychologist has also been able to set up a play-based learning workshop focused on interprofessional communication. “In recent years, my courses have expanded to include other professions, such as nursing students and midwives,” she explains. “But I remained frustrated by working in silos, even though the literature shows that 70% of medical incidents occur due to communication issues.”

The psychologist therefore decided to create a game in which communication between different professions is the only way to progress. “In the game, students face a situation involving a patient who is absent but needs to receive care,” she explains. “We cover all the skills associated with teamwork and leadership.”

That said, while all these workshops take the form of games, they are nonetheless rigorously supervised. “We’ve adopted a very scientific approach to this learning,” argues Hélène Givron. “After implementing them, we studied their effects and the students’ attitudes to ensure they didn’t have any negative consequences. All of this was reported during faculty meetings where our actions were discussed. Finally, we have all been trained in this approach, which makes it all the more robust.”

In this way, we bring to life the statement by psychologist and child development specialist Francesco Tonucci: “All of life’s important learning takes place through play.”

For Dr. Dominique Henrion, a general practitioner and director of the master’s program in general medicine at UNamur (joint degree with UCLouvain), it is essential to take action as early as the training phase:

“Repeated clinical rotations in rural areas significantly increase the likelihood that a young doctor will later choose to set up practice there. We also know that students are largely in favor of this. So we needed to turn this interest into a real opportunity.”

However, several obstacles still hinder these hands-on experiences: housing, mobility, and the fear of isolation. It was to address these challenges that the concept of a rural training hub was developed.

In practical terms, these centers offer third-year medical students an internship structured around three key elements: a supervising physician, nearby housing, and transportation arrangements for the entire duration of the internship.

Aurélie Strickaert, a project manager in the Department of Medicine at UNamur, highlights the practical rationale behind the program:

“We wanted to create a simple and effective solution that focuses directly on students’ needs. By combining supervision, housing, and transportation, we’re creating the conditions that make a rural internship truly accessible and attractive.”

This year, nine host centers were established in the provinces of Namur, Hainaut, and Luxembourg, enabling 26 students to gain a diverse hands-on internship experience in the field.

Among these various centers, the one in Chevetogne stands out for its foundational and replicable nature. Its uniqueness lies in the provision of housing within the Chevetogne Provincial Estate, capable of accommodating seven students completing their internships with physicians practicing in the municipalities of Ciney, Houyet, and Rochefort. To facilitate their commutes, each partner municipality provides a CPAS shuttle or a municipal vehicle.

For the Province of Namur, this project is fully aligned with its territorial and well-being priorities. Virginie Solbreux, chief of staff representing Provincial Deputy Isabelle Joiret, explains:

“By supporting this initiative, the Province of Namur is contributing to a concrete solution to the shortage of doctors in rural areas. It is a way to support local stakeholders, enhance the region’s appeal, and participate in an initiative that is meaningful to citizens.”

The Chevetogne Provincial Estate plays a central role in this pilot phase. In addition to providing suitable accommodations, it helps reduce feelings of isolation by bringing the trainees together in a single living space.

For Marie-Julie Baeken, director of the Chevetogne Provincial Estate, this involvement is a natural extension of the site’s mission:

“The Chevetogne Provincial Estate offers a comfortable, welcoming living environment that is well-suited to temporarily hosting students. By participating in this project, we are putting our facilities to work in support of an important societal issue and an innovative regional initiative.”

Beyond providing practical accommodations, the project also helps foster local collaboration between the university, provincial authorities, municipalities, and healthcare professionals.

By exposing students to real-world situations, rural training centers have a twofold objective: to improve internship conditions and, in the longer term, to encourage the establishment of medical facilities in areas that are currently underserved.

Through this initiative, UNamur and its partners demonstrate that an innovative solution to the shortage of medical professionals can emerge from collaboration between academia, public authorities, and local stakeholders. In Chevetogne and the Ciney region, this initiative is now well underway.

An interactive map for objective analysis It is thanks to the fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration between geographers Aliz Hevesi and Catherine Linard, computer scientist Nicolas Matton, and Dr. Dominique Henrion that we owe the launch of an online map presenting a new rurality index specific to Wallonia, which combines population density, urban typology, and travel time to centers of activity. This interactive map aims to improve the planning of healthcare services in rural areas and to guide future general practitioners in their choice of practice location. This new tool has already been featured in the specialized press with a view to making it available to professionals. Published as open source, the interactive map is accessible for free below. 

Since 2023, the UNamur University Observatory on Rural Medicine (OUMRu) has been working on the issue of the declining availability of general practice services, particularly in underserved areas of Wallonia, with the aim of identifying potential solutions in collaboration with stakeholders on the ground. 

By analyzing adverse event reports recorded in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s pharmacovigilance database, researchers at UNamur have shown that certain birth control pills containing estrogens more similar to those naturally produced by the body, such as 17β-estradiol or estetrol, were associated with fewer reports of blood clots than pills containing ethinylestradiol, a synthetic estrogen that has been widely used for several decades. Furthermore, the rates observed with these new generations of contraceptives were similar to those reported for progestin-only pills, which are considered the safest in terms of cardiovascular risk.

This study confirms data collected by the same team in EudraVigilance, the European database for managing and analyzing reports of adverse drug reactions, and published in 2025 in the journal Contraception.

The findings of this research send an important message regarding public health, as the pill is used by millions of women worldwide. These results call for a reevaluation of certain prescribing practices in favor of options with a more favorable or even neutral thrombotic profile. This contribution is all the more crucial today, as more and more people are turning away from contraceptives or hormone replacement therapies, which are nonetheless essential for public health.

“Our goal is to shift the landscape of prescribing guidelines. Biological and observational evidence supporting formulations based on natural estrogens is growing. These data show us that safer alternatives exist; it is time to reverse the trend. ” — Lucie Raskin, Researcher in the Department of Pharmacy.

Beyond the findings themselves, this publication highlights the role of Belgian academic research in a field with significant societal impact. Through this work, Lucie Raskin embodies a new generation of researchers committed to addressing concrete issues in women’s health, while Jonathan Douxfils contributes the scientific and clinical expertise he has developed over several years on the links between hormones, coagulation, and thrombotic risk. This expertise now extends beyond the local context and is part of a European and international effort, particularly through Jonathan Douxfils’ participation in several international expert networks dedicated to contraceptive safety and the assessment of hormone-related thrombotic risk.

While venous thrombosis is the most serious complication associated with hormonal contraceptive use, other aspects are also beginning to be studied by the scientific community, particularly in terms of bone health and mental health. Regarding the risks of breast cancer, here too, the data are currently being updated and show favorable profiles depending on the progestin used.

This research demonstrates that more informed contraceptive choices are possible and that better use of scientific knowledge can improve prevention, reduce serious complications, and promote more personalized medicine in the field of women’s health. 

• Birth Control Pills: Assessing the Risk of Thrombosis for Safer Prescribing 
• Safer oral contraceptives thanks to natural estrogens

Photo: (c) Shutterstock - Craig Cordier

Animal venoms are a remarkable source of molecular diversity. The study of venoms, known as venomomics, enables the identification and characterization of the peptides and proteins that make them up. Optimized by evolution to interact rapidly and selectively with biological targets, some of these peptides could offer new opportunities to better detect, understand, or target cancer cells. 

A project supported by the SPW Research Win4SpinOff program

This is the avenue being explored by the VENOM2 project (Venom-based Exploration for Novel Oncology Molecules), which has just received Win4SpinOff funding, a measure from SPW Research designed to support the maturation of research results with a view to creating spin-off companies in Wallonia.

Targeting the most treatment-resistant cancers

VENOM2 is initially focusing on a refractory cancer for which treatment options remain limited. This choice is based in particular on the growing interest in certain biological targets involved in tumor progression and treatment resistance, which peptides derived from venoms could help to better detect, modulate, or target. 

A joint doctoral thesis between ULiège and UNamur

The project is being conducted under the joint supervision of Professors Loïc Quinton (Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, MolSys / Faculty of Sciences, ULiège) and Jean-Pierre Gillet—in the picture - (Laboratory of Molecular Cancer Biology (LBMC), NARILIS Research Institute, Faculty of Medicine, UNamur). It draws on the complementary nature of their respective areas of expertise: on the one hand, mass spectrometry, proteomics, and the detailed analysis of complex biological mixtures such as venoms; on the other hand, the study of mechanisms of cancer resistance to treatments.

The project is led by Lou Freuville, a joint PhD student at MSLab ULiège and LBMC UNamur. In this context, she benefits from the joint supervision of her two advisors to successfully carry out this project.

An approach combining analytical expertise and cancer biology

Specifically, VENOM2 will combine venom fractionation, functional screening on healthy and cancerous cell models, and advanced structural analyses to identify peptides capable of specifically targeting cancer cells or mechanisms involved in tumor progression. The approach thus combines ULiège’s analytical expertise in peptide characterization with UNamur’s expertise in biological and cellular cancer models.

The project’s originality lies in its dual potential for commercialization. Some peptides could be developed as targeting agents for molecular imaging, contributing to more precise diagnosis. Other candidates could have therapeutic potential by selectively modulating key biological pathways in oncology.

“With VENOM2, we aim to transform a biodiversity that remains largely underutilized into opportunities for precision oncology. The Win4SpinOff funding gives us the means to take significant new steps in research and the opportunity to test our ideas in the market. It embodies our commitment to developing innovative therapeutic solutions for cancers resistant to conventional treatments,” emphasize Professors Loïc Quinton and Jean-Pierre Gillet.

Toward a future Walloon spin-off

Beyond its scientific ambition, VENOM2 is part of a dynamic of technology transfer and value creation, laying the groundwork for a future spin-off company specializing in the development of peptides derived from venoms for human health, with the support of the technology transfer teams at ULiège, UNamur, and ULiège’s commercialization and investment company, Gesval. 

“This project lies at the intersection of several areas of expertise: detailed venom analysis, cancer biology, and the development of relevant cellular models. The goal is to identify peptides capable not only of recognizing certain tumor cells, but also of opening new avenues for better understanding and targeting mechanisms involved in cancers resistant to current treatments,” explains Lou Freuville. 

The project was developed with the support of technology transfer teams: Yasmina Zeroual for ULiège, Daniel Maréchal for Gesval, as well as Eléana Somville and Joël Marinozzi for UNamur.