Health care education and competence (HealthEduCom Lab)

The research group is researching healthcare education and competence. The research group’s focus areas include digitalization in education, technology and smart solutions for competence development and their impact on users.

The research group belongs to the unit of Health Sciences and Technology in the discipline of Nursing Science.

Research group information

Contact information

Research group leader

Research group description

The research group is led by Prof. Kristina Mikkonen. The group includes senior and post-doctoral researchers, doctoral candidates, and master students.

The research group is researching learning environments and mentoring to enhance healthcare students’, educators’ and professionals' competence development, collaboration, well-being and psychological safety.

We develop and test effective education by utilising hybrid intelligence and digitalization and technology in education to ensure a higher quality of patient care. We are further specialised in researching culturally and linguistically diverse minority groups’ and developing innovative methods in healthcare education and work communities.


Our multidisciplinary research team consists of experts working in national and international companies, hospitals, universities and research organisations. We contribute to - national and international policy-making, bringing together excellence from different fields to achieve common goals.

Research materials include qualitative and quantitative data and psychometrically tested instruments

Mentor Competence Instrument,

Mentor Cultural Competence Instrument,

Digital Competence & Associated Factors to Digital Competence instruments,

Social- and Health Care Educators' Competence).

The group use methods of theory development and testing, interventional studies, predictive modeling, systematic reviews with meta-analysis/meta-aggregation, qualitative study with content analysis, psychometrically validated instruments, & algorithmic and machine learning.

Research