Axel Wolf: "Nursing has very good ideas that we must evaluate in order to find solutions that will work tomorrow"

The Faculty of Nursing has received a guest visit from the professor of the University of Gothenburg (Gothenburg, Sweden), Axel Wolf, until next June. This is his first time in Spain: "I really like the city, the people, the food, but above all the nature that surrounds Navarra."Accompanied by his wife Johanna, their 15-months old son Alexander and their dog Bror, they take advantage of the afternoons to discover the differences between the Pamplona campus and the campus back home in Gothenburg: "The amount of green areas on the campus and the way in which connecting the different faculties. It is different to the University of Gothenburg, where the faculties are separated into different areas throughout the city”. It should be remembered that the University of Navarra has received the international Green Flag Award for the fifth consecutive year, awarded by the Keep Britain Tidy institution, for the management of parks and green spaces.

Regarding his stay, he considers that it is "a great opportunity to be able to work with colleagues from the Faculty of Nursing, to share and discuss aspects related to person-centered care, patient and public involvement, and change management." All started with the associate professor at the Department of Nursing for Adults, Maddi Olano, who did her postdoctoral research at the University of Gothenburg. As a profesor and senior consultant in anesthesia, Wolf does research, not only in person-centred care, but also in anesthesiology and critical care: “I conduct research on opioid-free anesthesia and lead the world's largest outcome trial in long-term recovery after surgery”. In addition, he is the deputy director of innovation and digitization at the insitute of Health and Care Sciences at the University of Gothenburg: “I believe that innovation and digitization are at the core of nursing, at least because nurses are on the front line of care and that is why I think it is so important to constantly drive innovation in nursing and health care.”

It is at this point of innovation that he refers to Registered Nurses – the front-line care expert, who are the first to treat a patient in many healthcare settings, providing hands-on care in collaboration with physicians and other healthcare professionals. - alluding that they are “one of the largest groups in health care, hence we need to grow and facilitate the ideas and skills that come from nursing; not only because the RNs have a lot of good ideas that we need to test, evaluate and develop, but also because we know that you need a lot of ideas to be able to find the solutions that will work tomorrow.” Wolf did his Executive MBA at the Gothenburg University School of Economics, “I was the only RN to take an MBA and I think it's a great area of development for everyone. Why not do the first MBA for nurses here at the University of Navarra?

National Center for Person-Centered Care

The University of Gothenburg Center for Person-Centered Care is a world-renowned research and development center of which Wolf is a part: “Since 2010, we have been researching and conducting clincial controlled trials on the topic of person-centred care. Currently, the center is affiliated with more than 100 researchers nationally and internationally with many ongoing projects. We believe that research results need to be implemented rapidly, therefore we have various online training courses, material, etc. for free” and adds that he hopes that “we will soon have translated our online change management program for person-centred care in practice into Spanish”. Currently, we have the online program in English, Swedish and French.