The healthcare sector is short of staff. Employers struggle to find the right people, while career-switchers and students want to qualify as fast as they can — on their own terms. Floow was built to close that gap, and in the Rijnmond region it is already doing exactly that.
The platform was developed together with Zadkine Health & Welfare College in Rotterdam-Rijnmond. Students work through the theory at their own pace in the Floow app, then sharpen their practical skills in hands-on training at Zadkine. Both sides are assessed at bronze, silver, and gold levels before being applied on the work floor — a structure that lets people start any time of year rather than waiting for fixed enrolment dates.
Teacher and program manager Gézina Trouw describes an approach that bends to the learner rather than the other way around. Students can flag what they want to cover — sometimes something they ran into at work the day before — right up to the evening before class, and the teaching team adapts: a guest lecture from a pain nurse, a diabetes nurse, or a neurologist when it's useful.
The cohort itself is deliberately mixed: newcomers from banking and mortgages who discovered the work through caring for someone, people moving over from elderly care, dental assistants, even a former ambulance driver. That diversity, Trouw notes, means students learn a great deal from each other too.
A standard MBO program usually takes two years. Because classes run fifty weeks a year, students can already finish in around eighteen months — and the flexible structure makes an even faster pace possible. Caregiver-IG Esmay Grootveld (26) completed her Verzorgende IG training in just nine months.
Grootveld had already worked for years in disability care at Zuidwester in Hellevoetsluis. Together with Trouw she built a personal development plan that mapped her existing certificates and experience, and from there set her own — fast — study pace.
Zuidwester played a decisive role too — funding the program through Grootveld's healthcare budget and backing her with support from colleagues and her care manager. She has since become an informal ambassador, encouraging colleagues to enrol. Her clients require a wide range of nursing procedures, from tube feeding and oxygen administration to catheterization, and the program prepared her for all of it.
Grootveld's story is one of many. The combination of the Floow platform and Zadkine's demand-driven teaching is gaining momentum across Rijnmond — and the logic for employers is simple. As the saying goes, training is the new recruiting: care organizations can train more people, get qualified professionals sooner, and strengthen continuity inside their own teams.
Zuidwester is a Dutch healthcare organization supporting people with intellectual disabilities or acquired brain injuries. With around 1,600 employees and 500 volunteers, it provides support in housing, daytime activities, work, individual guidance, and treatment across South Holland, Zeeland, and West Brabant — from its own residences or in clients' homes.
