Well-being for individuals and families in nursing (IndFamilyNurs)
Research group information
Unit and faculty
Research Unit of Health Sciences and Technology
Faculty of Medicine
Contact information
Research group leader
- ProfessorTarja Pölkki
Research group description
Research focus areas include:
- Promoting family orientation; developing instruments for the evaluation of family- and people-centered care and increasing the involvement of parents/relatives in the care
- The impact of the care and nature environment on the well-being; emphasizing the diversity of northern nature and its production virtually for different target groups
- Pain assessment and pain management; developing and testing multimodal pain assessment tools (considering also fear, anxiety, delirium), evaluating the effectiveness of nonpharmacological methods and increasing the competence of staff and students through training interventions
Research materials include qualitative and quantitative data based on the interviews, surveys and documents collected from patients, their families/relatives, and healthcare providers.
The group uses especially the methods of intervention studies (RCT), systematic reviews with meta-analysis, qualitative study with content analysis and developing psychometrically validated instruments. In addition, it is possible to use cohort study and theory development and testing.
Research group
The research group is lead by Prof. Tarja Pölkki. The group includes senior and post-doctoral researchers, doctoral candidates and master students.
Societal impact
The goal of our research group is to produce research evidence that enables the development of consistent practices and multidisciplinary innovations to promote family-orientation and the effectiveness of care in nursing environments. The results have the potential to reduce inequalities, promote justice and increase participation in care for different patient and population groups.
Our goal is to support the sustainable development to ensure healthy life and wellbeing for all ages, also including patients in hospital. Of particular interest are vulnerable children and their families.
The research project integrates knowledge from different disciplines in an innovative way to improve the quality and effectiveness of care. Collaboration is established with actors of the social and health service system, local companies, and researchers in various fields nationally and internationally.
Hankkeet
PEARL - Pain in Early Life
Icory Solution- Intelligent Solution for Surgery Care
EduPal - Developing palliative nursing and medical education through multi-disciplinary cooperation and working life collaboration
inDemand - Digital health solutions proposed and co-created with health care organisations
EUROPAIN - EUROpean-Pain-Audit-In-Neonates
