| 1. |
|
|
| 2. |
- Detlin, Mia
(author)
-
Work-integrated learning in a hospital ward setting : Exploring the interdependency between the professions and the organization
- 2023
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Introduction:Contemporary hospital settings are a challenging learning and working environment for healthcare professionals. The challenges are largely related to the increasing need for healthcare caused by an ageing population, a lack of personnel resources, and demands for time efficiency. Therefore, it is of interest to study how individuals and teams learn during these working conditions. Nurses are especially exposed when entering working life, why this profession has been of interest to explore further in this thesis. Furthermore, the interprofessional team is significant in providing qualitative care at the hospital wards, which could be affected by the lack of nurses and demands for efficiency. Aim: To explore work integrated learning from an individual nurse and interprofessional team learning perspective in a contemporary hospital ward setting.Methodology:Two qualitative approaches were used in this thesis. Study I was a qualitative content analysis based on individual interviews with 10 nurses within hospital ward care. Study II was an insider action research project (IAR) within a specific hospital ward. Data from the project in Study II were analyzed using the cycle of expansive learning.Results:Study I showed that, during their early working life, newly graduated nurses learned their profession by developing and using different learning strategies. Their initial strategy was to learn how to perform daily tasks as safely and effectively as possible. However, in learning how to provide qualitative care, the nurses realized the importance of participating in bedside care to gain clinical experience. Opportunities to learn from clinical experiences and reflection were essential for developing as a new nurse.Study II explored work integrated learning in an interprofessional ward team. The learning process resulted in the establishment of a digital planning board to illustrate the patients’ recovery process during their stay at the ward. This board opened an opportunity to learn about core values and goals for discharge, but also contributed to boundary awareness between the professionals, which was important for collaboration to improve patient safety in daily work. Discussion: The results reveal that work-integrated learning was manifested in an interdependency between the professionals and the health-care organization. The interdependency was multifaceted as the professionals were dependent on each other to learn as individuals in relation to each other, and to develop their joint work processes. The professionals were also dependent on the organizational prerequisites to learn. This result shows the need for the professionals to develop their own learning strategies to manage daily work, which was associated with the professional’s motivation in leading their own professional development towards qualitative and safe care.Conclusion:The results of this thesis reveal that the professions within a hospital ward setting are largely dependent on each other to create conditions for work integrated learning. The individuals and the team both had strong determination, will, and desire to learn to provide patients with care that was as qualitative and safe as possible. The quality of work-integrated learning was found to be related to the professions’ awareness of boundaries, knowledge, and responsibilities related to each other within the interprofessional team.
|
|
| 3. |
- Drobin, Kimi
(author)
-
Antibody-based bead arrays for high-throughput protein profiling in human plasma and serum
- 2018
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Affinity-based proteomics utilizes affinity binders to detect target proteins in a large-scale manner. This thesis describes a high-throughput method, which enables the search for biomarker candidates in human plasma and serum. A highly multiplexed antibody-based suspension bead array is created by coupling antibodies generated in the Human Protein Atlas project to color-coded beads. The beads are combined for parallel analysis of up to 384 analytes in patient and control samples. This provides data to compare protein levels from the different groups.In paper I osteoporosis patients are compared to healthy individuals to find disease-linked proteins. An untargeted discovery screening was conducted using 4608 antibodies in 16 cases and 6 controls. This revealed 72 unique proteins, which appeared differentially abundant. A validation screening of 91 cases and 89 controls confirmed that the protein autocrine motility factor receptor (AMFR) is decreased in the osteoporosis patients.Paper II investigates the risk proteome of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Antibodies targeting 209 proteins corresponding to 163 IBD genetic risk loci were selected. To find proteins related to IBD or its subgroups, sera from 49 patients with Crohn’s disease, 51 with ulcerative colitis and 50 matched controls were analyzed. From these targeted assays, the known inflammation-related marker serum amyloid protein A (SAA) was shown to be elevated in the IBD cases. In addition, the protein laccase (multi-copper oxidoreductase) domain containing 1 (LACC1) was found to be decreased in the IBD subjects.In conclusion, assays using affinity-based bead arrays were developed and applied to screen human plasma and serum samples in two disease contexts. Untargeted and targeted screening strategies were applied to discover disease-associated proteins. Upon further validation, these potential biomarker candidates could be valuable in future disease studies.
|
|
| 4. |
- Nilsson, Emil, 1989-
(author)
-
Borehole Thermal Energy Storage Systems for Storage of Industrial Excess Heat : Performance Evaluation and Modelling
- 2020
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Improving industrial energy efficiency is considered an important factor in reducing carbon dioxide emissions and counteract climate change. For many industrial companies in cold climates, heat generated at the site in summer will not be needed to fulfil the site heat demand during this time, and is thus removed to the outdoor air. Although a mismatch between heat generation and heat demand primarily being seasonal, a mismatch may also exist at times in the winter, e.g. during milder winter days or high production hours. If this excess heat instead of being sent to the outdoors was stored for later use when it is needed, purchased energy for the site could be decreased. One way to do this is by the use of a borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) system.A BTES system stores energy directly in the ground by using an array of closely drilled boreholes through which a heat carrier, often water, is circulated. So far, BTES systems used for heating purposes have mainly been used for storage of solar thermal energy. The BTES system has then been part of smaller district solar heating systems to reduce the seasonal mismatch between incoming solar radiation and heat demand, thus increasing system solar fraction. For this application of BTES systems, energy for storage can be controlled by the sizing of the solar collector area. At an industrial site, however, the energy that can be stored will be limited to the excess heat at the site, and the possible presence of several time-varying processes generating heat at different temperatures gives options as to which processes to include in the heat recovery process and how to design the BTES system. Moreover, to determine the available heat for storage at an industrial site, individual measurements of the heat streams to be included are required. Thus, this must be made more site-specific as compared to that of the traditional usage of BTES systems where solar thermal energy is stored, in which case long-time historic solar radiation data to do this is readily accessible for most locations. Furthermore, for performance predictions of industrial BTES systems to be used for both seasonal and short-term storage of energy, models that can treat the short-term effects are needed, as traditional models for predicting BTES performance do not consider this.Although large-scale BTES systems have been around since the 1970’s, little data is to be found in the literature on how design parameters such as borehole spacing and borehole depth affect storage performance, especially for industrial BTES applications. Most studies that can be found with regard to the designing of ground heat exchanger systems are for traditional ground source heat pumps, working at the natural temperature of the ground and being limited to only one or a few boreholes.In this work, the performance of the first and largest industrial BTES system in Sweden was first presented and evaluated with regard to the storage’s first seven years in operation. The BTES system, which has been used for both long- and short-term storage of energy, was then modelled in the IDA ICE 4.8 environment with the aim to model actual storage performance. Finally, the model was used to conduct a parametric study on the BTES system, where e.g. the impact on storage performance from borehole spacing and characteristics of the storage supply flow at heat injection were investigated. From the performance evaluation it could be concluded that lower than estimated quantities and/or quality of the excess heat at the site, resulting in lower storage supply flow temperatures at heat injection, has hindered the storage from reaching temperatures necessary for significant amounts of energy to be extracted. Based on the repeating annual storage behavior seen for the last years of the evaluation period, a long-term annual heat extraction and ratio of energy extracted to energy injected of approximately 400 MWh/year and 20% respectively are likely.For the comparison of predicted and measured storage performance, which considered a period of three years, predicted values for total injected and extracted energy deviated from measured values by less than 1 and 3% respectively, and predicted and measured values for injected and extracted energy followed the same pattern throughout the period. Furthermore, the mean relative difference for the storage temperatures was 4%. A time-step analysis confirmed that the intermittent heat injection and extraction, occurring at intervals down to half a day, had been captured in the three-year validation. This as predictions would become erroneous when the time step exceeded the time at which these changes in storage operation occur.Main findings from the parametric study include that 1) for investigated supply flows at heat injection, a high temperature was more important than a high flow rate in order to achieve high annual heat extractions and that 2) annual heat extraction would rapidly reduce as the borehole spacing was decreased from the one yielding the highest annual heat extraction, whereas the reduction in annual heat extraction was quite slow when the spacing was increased from this point. Another conclusion that came from the performance evaluation and the parametric study, as a consequence of the Emmaboda storage being designed as a high-temperature BTES system, intended working temperatures being 40–55 °C, was that the possibility of designing the BTES system for low working temperatures should be considered in the designing of a BTES system. Lower storage operation temperatures allow for more energy to be injected and in turn for more energy to be extracted and reduces storage heat losses to the surroundings.
|
|
| 5. |
- Nilsson, Emma, 1982-
(author)
-
Sociala konstruktioner i förskolans planeringssamtal : I en landsgränsnära förskola
- 2016
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overall aim of this study is to describe the preschool setting that is constructed in the preschool teacher’s planning conversations with a special focus on the border context in which this particular preschool is located. In what ways are the geographic location noticeable and what conceptions are established in their conversations? The study has a social constructivist approach and is informed by borderland theory which means that the focus is on the context and the participants in this context. The staff's experience is, however, seen as historically and culturally influenced by the context. With the support of borderland theory the study explores how the preschool´s borderland location has relevance to the social construction in the preschool studied.This research project is an observation study of a two- sectionpreschool in Sweden close to the Norwegian border which started in the spring of 2013. The preschool teachers were observed in staff meetings, all together and in smaller groups. The target group consists of educators and other staff. The Swedish ethical guidelines for research on children have been observed in all respects.The result shows how the staff of the researched preschool construct themselves as a unified us as opposed to them, not in terms of national borders, but in relation to their joint decisions on what they share and have in common and on who do not – the others.Keywords:Preschool, kindergarten, preschool teachers, border/national border, staff meetings/planning conversations, curricula and constructions/social construction
|
|
| 6. |
- Nilsson, Maria
(author)
-
Mind the Gap : Human Decision Making and Information Fusion
- 2008
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Information fusion, i.e., the automatic integration of information from multiple sources, is an advancing research area which can assist decision makers in enhancing their decisions. Most information fusion research so far has had a technical focus and has paid relatively little attention to human decision making processes. Hence, through both theoretical and empirical studies, the research presented in this licentiate thesis seeks to characterise the interdependencies between human decision making and information fusion. The work presented constitutes different building blocks for a framework for the information fusion community. The initial framework promotes a user (decision maker) centred perspective and is presented as an instrument with which to understand the various ways decision makers can influence information fusion systems and processes.
|
|
| 7. |
- Nilsson, Maria, 1984-
(author)
-
Tribology in Metal Working
- 2012
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis focuses on the tribological performance of tool surfaces in two steel working operations, namely wire drawing and hot rolling. In all forming operations dimensions and surface finish of the products are of utmost importance. Forming basically includes three parts – forming conditions excluded – that may be changed; work material, tool and (possibly) lubricant. In the interface between work material and tool, the conditions are very aggressive with – generally or locally – high temperatures and pressures. The surfaces will be worn in various ways and this will change the conditions in the process. Consequently, the surface finish as well as the dimensions of the formed product may change and in the end, the product will not fulfil the requirements of the customer. Therefore, research and development in regard to wear, and consequently tribology, of the forming tools is of great interest.The investigations of wire drawing dies focus on coating adhesion/cohesion, surface characteristics and material transfer onto the coated steel both in laboratory scale as well as in the wire drawing process. Results show that it in wire drawing is possible to enhance the tribological performance of drawing dies by using a lubricant together with a steel substrate coated by a polished, dual-layer coating containing both hard and friction-lowering layers.The investigations of hot rolling work rolls focus on microstructure and hardness as well as cracking- and surface characteristics in both laboratory scale and in the hot strip mill. Results show that an ideal hot work roll material should be made up of a matrix with high hardness and a large amount of complex, hard carbides evenly distributed in the microstructure. The surface failure mechanisms of work rolls are very complex involving plastic deformation, abrasive wear, adhesive wear, mechanical and thermal induced cracking, material transfer and oxidation.This knowledge may be used to develop new tools with higher wear resistance giving better performance, lower costs and lower environmental impact.
|
|
| 8. |
- Skeppstedt, Maria, 1977-
(author)
-
From Disorder to Order : Extracting clinical findings from unstructured text
- 2012
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Medical disorders and findings are examples of important information in health record text. Through developing methods for automatically extracting these entities from the health record text, the possibility of making use of the information by automatic computerised processes increases. That a disorder or finding is mentioned in the health record, however, does not necessarily imply that it has been observed in the patient, because disorders that are ruled out and findings that are not observed in the patient are also mentioned.This licentiate thesis investigates the possibility of automatically extracting disorders and findings from Swedish health record text and the possibility of automatically determining whether these findings and disorders are negated or not.A rule- and terminology-based system that uses several Swedish medical terminologies, including SNOMED~CT and ICD-10 for extracting disorders, findings and body structures mentioned in Swedish clinical text was constructed and evaluated. Moreover, an English rule-based system for negation detection, NegEx, was adapted to Swedish and evaluated on clinical text written in Swedish.The evaluation showed that disorders and findings were recognised with low recall, whereas body structures were recognised with comparatively good results. The negation detection system that was adapted to Swedish achieved the same recall as the English system, but lower precision.The evaluated systems are accurate enough to be useful in some applications, but need to be further developed, especially when it comes to recognising disorders and findings.
|
|
| 9. |
- Viking, Tuija
(author)
-
En studie om interprofessionellt lärande i teamarbete : Fallet med en 'best practice´ för tvångsvård
- 2019
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Det interprofessionella lärandet, IPL, i team har blivit ett populärt medel för att öka samarbete och kvalité i den sociala sektorn och hälso- och sjukvård. En alltmer specialiserad och fragmentiserad vård, som ofta genomförs i team, har lett till stor spridning av interprofessionell utbildning, IPE. Studerande och/eller medlemmar från olika professioner lär sig därmed, med, från och om varandra. Sådant lärande antas ske vid utbyte av och reflektion över varandras olika erfarenheter, perspektiv och kunskaper, d.v.s. professionella skillnader, och leda till förbättrad effektivitet och kvalitet i vården.Inom hälso- och sjukvårdsområdet har man dock bara i mindre skala undersökt vad IPL i etablerade team innebär och hur professionella skillnader påverkar lärandet. Denna licentiatuppsats hade som övergripande syfte att bidra med ökad kunskap inom detta område. Här studerades ett arbete, med kliniska riktlinjer för psykiatrisk tvångsvård, som skulle genomföras av ett interprofessionellt team. Huvudfrågan var hur teamet arbetade med riktlinjerna och hur professionella skillnader kom till uttryck och gav implikationer för IPL. Licentiatuppsatsen är en fallstudie. Undersökningen baseras dels på material (mötesprotokoll, mejlkommunikation, dokument och mediarapporter) från teamets tre-åriga arbete, dels nio intervjuer och en observation av seminariet där teammedlemmar presenterade de färdiga riktlinjerna. Studie 1 syftade till att undersöka hur teamet hanterade en kontrovers och hur de strategier som användes gav konsekvenser för interprofessionellt lärande. Studie 2 syftade till att studera hur teamet granskade kön/genus i arbetet med riktlinjerna och vilka implikationer det blev för riktlinjerna och för interprofessionellt lärande. Fokus här är därmed på ett lärande i ett "färdigt" team. Resultaten i studierna baseras på fallbeskrivning och narrativ analys. Fynden i studierna tolkades huvudsakligen utifrån sociokulturell teori och idéer och insikter från kontroversstudier (studie 1) och det genusvetenskapliga fältet (studie 2).Resultatet i studie 1 visade att kontroversen hanterades främst genom en kompromiss. Resultatet visar också hur lärandestrategier nyttjades vid användning av texter. Lärandet utmanades dock när maktstrategier användes genom hävdande av auktoritet snarare än utforskande av kunskapsläget.Resultatet i studie 2 visade hur kön/genus aktualiserades i en diskussion om könsskillnader i användning av tvångsbälten. I diskussionen användes professionsspecifika erfarenheter och kunskaper om kön/genus, vilket kan antas främjade IPL. Teamets lärande om komplexiteten kring kön/genus resulterade i riktlinjer som betonar makt och med fokus på den individuella patienten. Därmed ledde teamets analys och lärande relaterat till kön/genus paradoxalt till könsneutrala riktlinjer. Slutsatsen är att studierna, på olika sätt, visade förekomst av IPL och hur detta påverkades både positivt och negativt av professionella skillnader.
|
|
| 10. |
- Öhman, Maria
(author)
-
An in situ spectro-electrochemical study of aluminium/polymer interfaces : development of ATR-FTIR and its integration with EIS for corrosion studies
- 2006
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In order to extend the applications of aluminium, organic coatings may be applied on sheet materials, for instance for corrosion protection or aesthetic surface finish purposes in the automotive and construction industries, or on foil materials in the flexible packaging industry. The most common mechanisms for deterioration and structural failure of organically coated aluminium structures are triggered by exposures to the surrounding environment. Despite the great importance to elucidate the influence of exposure parameters on a buried aluminium/polymer interface, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the mechanisms that destabilise the structure. It is generally believed that a detailed in situ analysis of the transport of corroding species to the buried interface, or of surface processes occurring therein, is most difficult to perform at relevant climatic and real-time conditions. In this work, Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) in the Kretschmann-ATR configuration was successfully applied to in situ studies of the transport of water and ionic species through polymer films to the aluminium/polymer interface upon exposure to ultra pure deionised water and to a 1 M sodium thiocyanate (NaSCN) model electrolyte. Other main processes distinguished were the formation of corrosion products on the aluminium surface and swelling of the surface-near polymer network. Hence, in situ ATR-FTIR was capable to separate deterioration-related processes from each other. To perform more unambiguous interpretations, a spectro-electrochemical method was also developed for in situ studies of the buried aluminium/polymer interface by integrating the ATR-FTIR technique with a complementary acting technique, Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). While transport of water and electrolyte through the polymer film to the aluminium/polymer interface and subsequent oxidation/corrosion of aluminium could be followed by ATR-FTIR, the protective properties of the polymer as well as of processes at the aluminium surface were simultaneously studied by EIS. The integrated set-up provided complementary information of the aluminium/polymer sample investigated, with ATR-FTIR being sensitive to the surface-near region and EIS being sensitive to the whole system. While oxidation/corrosion and delamination are difficult to distinguish by EIS, oxide formation could be confirmed by ATR-FTIR. Additionally, while delamination and polymer swelling may be difficult to separate with ATR-FTIR, EIS distinguished swelling of the polymer network and also identified ultimate failure as a result of delamination. The capability of the integrated ATR-FTIR / EIS in situ technique was explored by studying aluminium/polymer systems of varying characteristics. Differences in water and electrolyte ingress could be monitored, as well as metal corrosion, polymer swelling and delamination.
|
|
