Careum promotes and teaches highly practice-oriented skills and knowledge for the healthcare sector. The non-profit foundation has been committed to this purpose for more than 140 years.
Careum’s work is at the intersection of education and healthcare. Social, scientific, political and technological developments take place in both of these realms that not only result in changing requirements and challenges, but also open up new opportunities and possibilities. This is where we aspire to make a relevant contribution by providing effective support to the people and organisations working in the healthcare sector and making an active effort to safeguard the provision of healthcare services.
We offer a wide range of educational offerings to strengthen and empower more than 11,000 trainees, students and continuing education students from the healthcare sector. We research the latest healthcare- and nursing-related topics, publish our own teaching and study materials and are committed to the promotion of health literacy in Switzerland. At our facilities in Zurich and Aarau, we offer contemporary places to study and work, and provide an important space for interprofessional meetings and events.
All our activities are systematically aligned with our foundation’s mission, our vision and our values:
Our foundation’s mission: “The Foundation supports training in healthcare and social services through innovation and development.”
On that basis, we currently view our mission as follows: “Careum explores and teaches highly practice-oriented skills and knowledge in the healthcare sector. We do this to strengthen, empower and network dedicated healthcare workers, systems and organisations every year.”
Our vision: “Fit for the world of healthcare. With enthusiasm, knowledge and experience, we enable inspiring, long-term learning.”
Through our wide range of offers, we empower trainees, students, specialists and leaders in every phase of their work, career and life to work in the world of healthcare – both today and tomorrow. We are passionate about this because positive emotions strengthen long-term retention of the material learned.
Our five values: respectful, effective, unifying, dynamic, ambitious.
We are committed to embracing our five most important values in everything we do. They guide our actions and collaboration, both within the Foundation and beyond.
We have defined three strategic action fields based on these principles as well as key developments within our environment and stakeholder groups: individualised and personalised offerings, digital transformation as well as education for the provision of tomorrow’s healthcare services. Over the course of the next few years, we aspire to be more active in these three closely related areas and implement projects in a targeted manner.
Careum is a financially and politically independent non-profit foundation that was founded in 1882. Careum currently comprises Careum Publishing House and the Center for Health Literacy as well as the subsidiaries Careum Educational Center, Careum School of Health, Careum Continuing Education and Edubase.
The Foundation’s funds as well as the income generated by our subsidiaries are used in full to achieve the Foundation’s mission: We invest them in the quality and further development of our educational offerings and infrastructure, in our employees and in innovations and projects that fall within the realm of education and health.
When providing training and continuing education for healthcare professionals, we collaborate closely with institutions providing educational and practical training, associations and professional organisations and are actively involved in national and international networks. Sciana (a network across Europe), ZIPAS (an interprofessional clinical training station in Zurich) and the Evivo Network (an association for people with chronic illnesses) are a few examples of these.