Åsa Hörnsten

I am an educated district nurse but now work as a Professor of Nursing at the Department of Nursing, where nurses, specialist nurses, midwives and radiology nurses are trained. I am the subject manager for Nursing and work to ensure that the subject and the associated theory formation are made visible and developed within education and research at the department. Person-centered nursing and self-care in chronic disease and diabetes, in particular, are my areas of expertise.

The current ongoing research projects, DIGEST, Chi2, and eDIT, which I am mainly involved in, concern what it is like to live with and manage self-care in diabetes and how support for these people can be improved and become more person-centered or family-centered. I am also involved in the project, PRIMVIZA, which aims to support self-care in primary care among people who have been shown via ultrasound images to have unhealthy atherosclerotic plaques in the carotid arteries.

I especially wish that the skills of the district nurses are utilized, and that primary care is developed country with their help, as well as that research results are implemented in primary care. I am also appointed by the National Board of Health and Welfare as a scientific advisor for the area of ​​primary care. I have also had several commissions from UKÄ to review the quality of district nursing education, in particular, in the country.

My clinical career began as a registered nurse in various hospital departments, then as a specialist nurse in anesthesia and last as a district nurse in primary care. As a district nurse, I have worked in both home health care and reception at several health centers and family centers. In 2004, I defended my dissertation at Umeå University with a thesis on diabetes care, where the experiences of patients and nurses were contrasted. I became an associate professor in 2012 and a professor in 2015.