Susanne Assander
PhD student
I'm a PhD student in the Doctoral School in Health Care and Science, and are working at the Occupational Therapy division (at NVS) in Flemingsberg.
About me
I'm an Occupational Therapist (OT) since 2009 and have worked in hospitals, care homes, and for home health care providers in Sweden. I conducted my master education via the European Master of Science in OT (2015-2017) while living in Austria and working for the OT department in Graz as a teacher and research assistants.
2018 I begun my PhD journey her at KI and belong to the HELD team (https://ki.se/en/nvs/the-held-research-group) and the Future Care team (https://ki.se/en/nvs/research-programme-future-care-for-older-adults-in…).
I´m also chair of the NVS Doctoral Student Council (Welcome to the NVS Doctoral Student Council webpage | Karolinska Institutet (ki.se).
Research description
My project aims to develop new knowledge regarding how reablement can be applied and implemented in Swedish home care settings by developing, assessing and evaluating a new reablement program called ASSIST. ASSIST aims to empower older adults to conduct wanted and needed activities in everyday life and thereby increase their self-efficacy, perceived health, and well-being. The program consisted of i) the provision of reablement by home care staff ii) setting activity-oriented goals with the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure, iii) providing coaching by an Occupational Therapist to home care staff, and iiii) testing QR-codes to facilitate and streamline the program.
In combination with the ASSIST program, I´m also exploring how home care staff perceives their level of job strain and psychosocial work environment as well as exploring the usability of the QR-codes within the context of home care.
You´ll find more information about the ASSIST project here:
ASSIST- a reablement program with ICT support | Karolinska Institutet (ki.se)
Education
PhD education, KI, 2018-2023
European Master of Science in Occupational Therapy, Amsterdam University, 2015-2017
Bachelor of Medicine Science in Occupational Therapy, Linköping University, 2006-2009
Academic honours, awards and prizes
Prizes
EIT Health PhD Translational Fellowships, Oxford, 2019.
The prize included a training camp at Oxford University that focused on obtaining transferable skills for entrepreneurship training, which included professional pitch training by a highly-skilled pitch coach and further supported by the technology transfer and intellectual property offices of the universities involved for the duration of their fellowship.