Category Archives: Uncategorized

Congratulations Dr Emma Säfström

On the 31 of mars, Emma Säfström defended her thesis ”Continuity of care after hospitalization due to cardiac conditions: Patients’ perceptions, validity and reliability of a measure, and associations with outcomes”. Professor Anna Forsberg from Lunds University was the opponent. The thesis describes how patients with cardiac conditions perceive continuity of care after discharge from hospital, and how it is associated with factors such as perceived control self-care, health-related quality of life and readmissions.

The inspiration for the thesis came from clinical experiences of patients’ vulnerability after discharge. ‘After discharge from hospital, the patients are very vulnerable, and I wanted to improve their situation’ Emma Säfström says and develops: ’The patients may receive care from specialized outpatient clinics, primary care and home healthcare at the same time. If the responsibilities between the different health care providers are not clear, there is a risk of fragmentation of care. In the worst-case scenario, the patients are left on their own to organize the care’.

In order to enable measuring the patients’ perception, a Canadian questionnaire; the Patient Continuity of Care Questionnaire (PCCQ) was translated from English to Swedish and adapted to a Swedish setting. Data was collected from 1000 patients. The questionnaire has proved good validity and reliability. Furter, the patients perceived highest levels of continuity in items related to relational continuity and lowest levels of continuity in items related to management continuity.

Now, the goal is that the questionnaire PCCQ will be implemented and used as a validated, standardized way to evaluate the patients’ perception of continuity of care after hospitalization.

The thesis is available: https://doi.org/10.3384/9789180750486  

The Swedish network for cardiac arrest survivors and their next of kin

Recently, I had a chance to talk to Johan Israelsson, one of the founders of the Swedish network for cardiac arrest survivors and next of kin. Johan has a PhD in Caring science and has done research on cardiac arrest survivors and their health-related quality of life.  

Johan tells me that the founders of the network consist of about 15 people, including representatives from the Swedish Resuscitation Council (Svenska Rådet för Hjärt-lungräddning), The Swedish Heart and Lung Association (Riksförbundet HjärtLung), but most importantly cardiac arrest survivors and their next of kin.

The network´s FB-group was created to provide a platform for those surviving a cardiac arrest or being a next of kin, to find support and comfort, as there is a lack of support available in the healthcare system. The FB-group started in the spring of 2021 and currently has over 320 members. To become a member of the FB-group, one must be a cardiac arrest survivor or a next of kin (and accept the group rules). The group provides its members with an opportunity to share their stories and experiences, which leads to powerful stories and opportunity to get to know each other. Johan believes that this network will provide the members with comfort and support, as many survivors and their next of kin may feel sense of loneliness in their experience.

The link to the FB-group is to be found in the information for survivors and next of kin that’s handed out during post cardiac arrest follow-up in Sweden, which will hopefully help even more survivors and the next of kin in the future.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hjartstopp

The picture is from a zoom-meeting with some of the representatives of the founders of the group.
 

/ Karin Larsson

CESAR met for a writing retreat

In mid January a group from CESAR met for a writing retreat. The work focused mainly on the writing of three papers in the field of heart disease. One of the papers focuses on the co-design of an online support programme for informal carers of people with heart failure. The two others are based on research conducted within the Nordic research project HeartMind aiming to study families with a parent affected by heart disease, with one of the papers focusing on the life situations of healthy spouses and the other on the ill parents’ perspective. The group had some very productive days with meetings and supervision of PhD students and some recreational activities, apart from the writing. Hopefully we can all look forward to three new papers being submitted and adding knowledge to the field of heart disease during spring 2023!

CESAR Writing retreat

The 17-18th of November 2022, we had a great writing retreat within our Network at Villa Fridhem in Åby, Sweden. It was great that most could meet in person. During our meeting, our international members, or members who could not participate the retreat, joined online.

Thank you all for the great 2-days!

Congratulations!

From the left: Tiny Jaarsma, Marie Lundberg, Ghassan Mourad, Emma Säfström and Anna Strömberg

We congratulate PhD-student Emma Säfström for being nominated for the Association of Cardiovascular Nursing & Allied Professions (ACNAP) doctoral student award! Emma’s excellent presentation concerned a project where she has worked on developing a short version and psychometric evaluation of an instrument on patient continuity of care. Emma is supervised by Professors Tiny Jaarsma, Anna Strömberg and Doctor Maria Liljeroos.

We also congratulate Marie Lundberg for her nomination for the ACNAP clinical case excellence award! Marie held a great presentation on a case from the Tele-Yoga project concerning a young woman with pulmonary arterial hypertension and what happened when she tried yoga. Professor Anna Strömberg is the Tele-yoga study’s project leader.

Finally, we congratulate doctor Ghassan Mourad for winning best rapid fire abstract presentation! Ghassan did a brilliant presentation on a project about the cost-effectivness of internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy in patients with cardiovascular disease and depressive symptoms.

Emma, Marie and Ghassan all presented their work at the EuroHeartCare 2022 in Madrid. In the picture you also see Professors Anna Strömberg, and Tiny Jaarsma and they are the co-founders of Cesar!