Health care education and competence (HealthEduCom Lab)
While the group is grounded in Nursing Science, our research adopts a transdisciplinary approach that bridges health sciences, psychology, education, and technology, fostering innovative solutions for competence development in healthcare.
The group operates within the Unit of Health Sciences and Technology at the University of Oulu.
Research group information
Unit and faculty
Contact information
Research group leader
- Professor
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 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.
Cultural competence in social and healthcare work environments
LearnHybrid - A hybrid training model to ensure the development of competence in health sciences
Competent workforce for the health care and social services sector
EBHC-CT - Evidence-Based-Healthcare and Computational thinking in Advanced Nursing Science Education
QualMent - Quality Mentorship for Developing Competent Nursing Students
ICU-CT - Computational thinking in ICU - A digital collaboration project
Digital and Collaborative Learning Competence of the Students and their Educators in Health Sciences
HARKKA - From training to working life in changing operating environments in the health sector
TerOpe - Professional Competence Development and Continues Education of Health Sciences Teacher
