NURED in action in Sweden – MDH & Eskilstuna in close collaboration!

Dear NURED blog readers, we hope your February is as sunny and snowy as beautiful Helsinki this week (…though perhaps a little warmer, as we are enjoying temperatures of -16*!). Or as equally beautiful Eskilstuna – the headquarters of NURED’s Swedish Team! In this blog we’ve already introduced you to Finland’s, Estonia’s and Latvia’s teams, and last but not least: here are some greetings from Mälardalen University.

“Hi all NURED friends!

A new and exciting NURED year 2018 has just started, we look forward continuing the work and research in the NURED project.

Mälardalen University (MDH) (External link) is one of Sweden’s major university colleges (although we simply call us a “University” – that is another national discussion…) with 15,000 students and 900 employees. Nevertheless, the university is characterized by short distances – to the surrounding Mälardalen region, between students and teachers, and to our campuses (Eskilstuna and Västerås). At MDH, we offer educational programmes on different levels within four educational areas: economics, health and welfare, teacher education, and engineering. Our students are attractive on the labour market. According to the Swedish higher education authority, as many as 84 percent of MDH students find a job within their area of expertise within one year after their degree.

We belong to HVV – The School of Health, Care and Social Welfare. The organisation is led by the Dean of School and there are about 180 teachers and researchers in the staff. About one third of us have doctoral degree. Several of the senior lecturers are involved in research projects and are supervising Ph.D. students in their studies. Internationalization is a prioritized area at the School of Health, Care and Social Welfare. In an increasingly globalised world, it is necessary to build international networks, develop staff and student exchanges and stimulate international research cooperation: a challenge we look forward to! The schools premises are modern and well equipped, in both Eskilstuna and Västerås. Our third level programme with, doctoral students/PhD students is a multiprofessional, international programme in the field of Health and Welfare. It started autumn 2012, today we have about active 30 doctoral students and about 10 have graduated as PhDs.

The MDH NURED team

Christine Gustafsson, associate professor and local project leader

Sylvia Olsson, lecturer and PhD student

Collaboration partners in Eskilstuna Municipality:

Marie Skoghill, officer of development

Karin Löwenborg, developer in care and support to persons with intellectual disability

Anders Lindström, developer in care and support to persons with intellectual disability

Eva Jansson, headmaster for adult education

Carola Nordmark Persson, teacher at Rinman upper secondary school youth students

Annika Rosberg, teacher at Rinman upper secondary school adult students

External experts:

Navii production AB (consults for the work with the web PFA education)

 

How is NURED progressing in Sweden?

Since Autumn 2017 we have begun writing on our first manuscript for a publication based on our survey. In December 4-5 2017 we had a successful national PFA conference (“Pedagogiskt förhållnings- och arbetssätt” – support for persons’ with intellectual disability for increased participation in everyday life), which in evaluations was overwhelming appreciated. There were around 150 people attending these two days and the conference theme was PFA and care and support to people with intellectual disability.

The conference was arranged in collaboration with Eskilstuna Municipality. All our local collaboration partners in the NURD project participated in the conference. If you want to read more about PFA and the conference, please see HERE (External link) (in Swedish).

Finally, we have also continued the extensive work with our web education, the web PFA education, which we will pilot in October-November 2018. We have learned that creating a one-week-web course consumes nearly a year…! So, we will have to work very hard in the production phase of the web PFA, in order to be ready to pilot test it in October.

Best Regards, Sylvia and Christine

We thank the Swedish Team for this fine update! Now that all partners have been presented, we look forward to having some of our researchers and steering group members blog about matters related to NURED (education, home care nursing, e-health…) – so stay tuned, and stay warm!