I am a senior lecturer of Politics and Policy Analysis in Aging and Later Life. My appointment is shared between the National Institute for the Study of Ageing and Later Life (NISAL), Department of Social and Welfare Studies; the Swedish National Centre for Setting Priorities in Health Care, Division of Health Care Analysis; and Medical Education – Interprofessional Learning, both at the Department of Medical and Health Sciences, all at Linköping University.
NISAL and CEDER
Within NISAL and CEDER my research focuses on issues related to citizenship for older people in general and people living with dementia in particular. Special interest is directed towards how the conditions for citizens with dementia to practise their citizenship is regarded and realised; how various institutional settings, norms and values, different ways of organising and practise, that construct the content of citizenship for people with dementia; and how various forms of participation can enhance the intentions of political equality that embrace the concept of citizenship. Special focus is on interactions and meaning-making processes, where various actors in different situations and locations are interpreting and forming the content of the citizenship for people with dementia. My interest is thus to enhance the understanding for the practice and content of citizenship for people with dementia, the social construction of people with dementia and the processes of inclusion and/or exclusion, and what implications this have from a political and democratic perspective. By departing from a comprehensive view of citizenship, placed in a democratic setting, the cases of dementia may shed light and problematise, not least, the aspect of active citizenship, since people with dementia suffer from changes and reductions in their communicative and/or cognitive abilities.
National Centre for Setting Priorities in Health Care
Within this Centre my research focuses on issues related to legitimacy, trust, different forms of organising, policy work and constructing meanings related to rationing, priority- and limit settings in health care. Special focus is done on the importance of “internal legitimacy” and on the internal organisational work with priorities, i.e. the work within the healthcare organisations, where various actors with different roles, logics and experiences (as politicians, administrators, various professionals) are interacting in order to reach an appropriate course of action among different types of situations that are characterised by conflicting pressures. Another special focus is on the value of “mediating institutions” in order to strengthening the internal legitimacy. These mediating institutions can function as sites for forming collective meanings for the actors in what they should do, how they should do it and how they can find support for their practices. The theoretical and empirical research on internal legitimacy and mediating institutions shed light on how legitimacy and trust can be generated and strengthened within the healthcare organisations, and moreover for the healthcare system at large. My research also involves issues related to how policies get shaped in complex knowledge intensive policy fields, as the health care, where different actors have various views on a policy problem and what they regard as evidence and knowledge. E.g. a study on a personalised health care and the different understandings and problem frames related to personalisation among actors (members of a regional advisory body, senior administrators and clinical unit managers) at a regional level in Sweden.
Interprofessional learning
Within Medical Education – Interprofessional learning I am pedagogical responsible teacher and coordinator for the module Quality and Improvement in Health care (Förbättringskunskap – HEL2). The module is cross-programme integrated, i.e. it involves students from different programmes Medicine, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Speech and Language Pathology, and Biomedical Laboratory Science. The pedagogical profile is Problem-based learning. The module involves ”contact persons” for each small 8-student group from the regional health authority ”Region Östergötland” - RÖ. In this module the students are working on real-case scenarios where the RÖ have suggested actual cases in their unit etc. for the students to work on in order to improve quality for the patients. By that once could say that it is also "a cross-authority” module.
