LEADERSHIP ASSIGNMENT. For eight years, Ingela Lundgren has been head of one of Sahlgrenska Academy’s smallest units, the Institute of Health and Care Sciences. Heading the institute has not been a small assignment though, but rather a complex and multifaceted one. As head of the institute, she has managed to increase the proportion of teachers with a doctorate.
Compared with the other institutes at Sahlgrenska Academy, the institute where Ingela Lundgren works is relatively new. In 1998 University College of Health Sciences became part of the University of Gothenburg. In 2001, the same year Sahlgrenska Academy was formed, what was then the Faculty of Health Sciences and health sciences gained their own postgraduate studies at the University of Gothenburg. In 2006, in conjunction with Sahlgrenska Academy’s merger into a single faculty and organization into the institute’s divisions we know today, the institute received its current name.
“The health sciences have not been part of the university for very long, but we’ve worked hard for our academic status, and we now have an obvious place within the University of Gothenburg,” Ingela Lundgren says. “Our strategic investment in recruiting teachers with doctoral degrees has turned out well, and now 70 of our 90 employees have PhDs. That is actually unique.”
Strategic visiting professors
The strategy of becoming an academic discipline has not been easy, given the relative youth of the health sciences.
“It’s difficult to recruit teachers with an academic background because the competition at the moment is great extensive to expanding educational programmes throughout the country,” says Ingela, whose institute has therefore focused on international visiting professors on five-year appointments:
“The visiting professor initiative has turned out very well and has helped us build up the institute. We also have collaborated a lot with the other institutes within Sahlgrenska Academy and with health sciences institutions internationally as well.”
In addition to academic qualifications, Ingela thinks it has been important for the institute for teachers and researchers to maintain their clinical qualifications. At the institute today there currently are 36 people with combination positions. One of them is Ingela herself. Besides her assignment as head of the institute, she is a professor of reproductive and perinatal health; she teaches midwife education; and one day a week she serves as a senior midwife at two maternity wards at Östra Sjukhuset (Eastern Hospital), something she will continue to do when her assignment as head of the institute is over.
A person-centered focus
During Ingela’s time as institute head, the institute’s research profile has undergone a change toward an increasing focus on person-centered care. In 2010 the Centre for Person-Centred Care was formed at the University of Gothenburg (GPCC) with support from the government’s strategic investment in health research. GPCC is a university-wide and interdisciplinary center led by Inger Ekman, a professor of nursing at the institute. Person-centered care is an approach that is gaining more and more ground in the health care sector. It means that the patients themselves become more involved and exercise more control over their own care. For Ingela this is a positive and self-evident development.
When Ingela was still in training as a midwife, she noticed how different women experienced their deliveries:
“Some had medically difficult deliveries but still felt that they were strong and had a good experience with childbirth. Others might have had relatively uncomplicated deliveries but experienced them as traumatic,” she explains.
Good care is the guiding light
Questions about how people perceive the existential event that childbirth represents have followed Ingela in her work as a midwife, as a midwife responsible for education and development at Eastern Hospital and in her research. That’s what her thesis was about: women’s experiences with childbirth.
“It’s very much about relationship, the support the woman receives and how we provide care, a care model that constantly evolves through reflection,” she maintains.
Research, which to a large extent has been done at the Institute of Health and Care Sciences, has shown that person-centered care is both effective and pays for itself, and is also good for the patients.
Ingela compares the task of an institute head to that of a captain who steers an Atlantic steamship in the right direction across the ocean.
“It’s a complex puzzle to bring together research, education and collaboration because there are no simple solutions. There’s not one single method that works.”
She feels, however, that she is standing steady at the helm and is motivated by a fixed idea: namely, to provide good care for the patients.
“It’s important to understand that this is the foundation of our professions. We are not doing just any old job, and I don’t believe that you can put just anyone in a caring position.
Chose health care, but it was not an obvious choice
Ingela is motivated by the big picture and visions and is not affected by passing influences. In the past people talked about a calling, and who hasn’t heard of Florence Nightingale.
“She’s a very good role model. She worked for the good of patients and to strengthen health care. She also promoted higher wages and better working conditions for nurses.”
The institute may be young, but Ingela’s profession is one of the oldest in the world. In 1711 the first midwife was educated in Sweden. In 1829 midwives were granted the right to use instruments. This meant that the midwife could use delivery instruments, which was unique for Sweden and affected survival rates among women and children.
History is a subject that is near to Ingela’s heart. Ingela grew up in the mill town of Skärblacka, where her mom was a housewife until the youngest sister was 10 years old and her father was an engineer at the paper mill. There was never any question that Ingela and her sisters would continue their studies, and the idea during upper-secondary school period was to enroll at Chalmers University of Technology. Ingela studied the natural sciences, but after working one summer in health care, she felt it suited her better.
“I’m very pleased with my choice of profession, but if I had made a completely independent choice, it probably would have been history. However, I teach about the history of midwifery.
Rapid expansion of educational places
Education is the main mission of the institute. In 2017 education alone accounted for 70% of the the institute’s SEK 170 million budget.
“We are working with soft values, and therefore we do not get very large research grants,” says Ingela.
Since 2015 the number of places in the midwifery program has more than doubled and also increased significantly in the other programs. The number of students is approximately 1,500. Since it’s difficult to find teachers with the right qualifications, there has been an appreciable increase in pressure on all employees who teach, Ingela points out. As in the other institutes, many of the students are having problems handling the exams.
The sharp increase in the number of students at the same time that it’s difficult to recruit teachers has increased pressure on the institute’s existing personnel. Ingela personally thinks that the shortage of personnel in health care that politicians are trying to solve by offering more places in educational programs really should be resolved in other ways:
“It’s a tough work situation in many areas of health care, and that’s why many choose to quit. Now we are trying to educate more students, even though there may not be enough demand for so many places in educational programs. It would have been better if they had invested the money in health care so people remained on the job.”
Another honorable mission
Now a priority at the institute is managing the honorable mission of ensuring that the students can cope with the studies, to find personnel with the right qualifications and to overcome the lack of premises.
When the assignment as head of the institute comes to an end in the summer, Ingela hopes to return to normal full-time work and get a little more time for her grandchildren. She has an honorable mission that just has to be completed on time, Ingela Lundgren says, laughing.
“I’m sewing a traditional folk costume which my son will wear when he gets married in Austria this summer.”
TEXT AND PHOTO: ANNA REHNBERG
