About me
I work as a head of the Psychooncology unit for adult cancer patients and the survivorship unit for adults that had cancer as a child at the Comprehensive Cancer Centre (Theme Cancer) at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. As a researcher I am conected to Yvonne Wengströms research group at Karolinska Institutet.
Research description
My research has consistently focused on psychosocial aspects of patients and relatives with cancer.
I finished my PhD in 2007 at Uppsala University with the thesis "Hope and Despair - Philosophy of life, expectations and optimism in cancer patient and their spouses”. The thesis involved life situation, philosophy of life, optimism and bereavement in patients with gastrointestinal cancer in a palliative phase, and their spouses, as well as on cancer patients' expectations on the time coming after they finished a curative cancer treatment.
I did a postdoc in the Fex-Can research project which included to examine different aspects of children, teens and young adults' situation during and after cancer, such as life situation, school situation, sexuality and fertility.
I have mainly two reserach areas at the moment. One focusing on the situation of patients who undergo allogeneic stem cell transplantation, their caregivers and also donors of stem cells.
- The Work after allo (WaA) research project. It is about prospectively study sick-leave and return to work up to five years after the treatment. In this project is Linda Eriksson a doctoral student.
- The Donor research project. It is about investigationd the psychological well being of donors in allogenic stem cell transplantation.
- The Hold on research project. It is about developing and feasibility testing an individual intervention for caregivers to patients going through an allogenic stem cell transplantation.
- The aCent research project. It is about developing, implementing and evaluation a model for person-centred care.
The other reserach area are the situation of teens and young adults (AYA) aged 16-30 years. I am a project leader of an innovation project called MyCode. It consists of five subprojects with the aim to provide AYAs close to diagnosis and under their cancer treatment with support and tools to better cope with their cancer journey. Two of the subprojects are research projects I am responsible for:
- The PRISM research project. It is about translating and adapting the PRISM intervention to a Swedish context and also make in work as in a digital version. The PRISM is currently tested in a pilot study at Karolinska University Hospital. This is done in cooperation with the PRISM developers at the Childerens Hospital in Seattle. You can learn more about the project in this video presentation https://youtu.be/WtDvPlX05Vo
- The PROM for AYA project. It is about developing a questionnaire adapted for teens and young adults that get cancer and through workshops with end users and health care professionals explore how this questionnaire can be used in clinical care. This is done in cooperatin with the EORTC organisation https://qol.eortc.org/questionnaire/aya/.
Teaching portfolio
I am course coordinator for the course Rehabilitation within cancer care, 7.5 hp and also for the course Caring Science within Hematology care 7,5hp. I am also involved in the specialist education for nurses within Oncology.
Education
Registred Nurse 1997
Basic education in Psychoterapy 2000
Magister in Caring Science 2002
PhD in Caring Science 2007