Postdoc in Nursing: a background degree program

Maddi Olano - teacher of department of Nursing Care for Adult Patients in the School of Nursing of the University of Navarra - has spent the last five months living first-hand "this incredible experience, both professionally and staff, which requires you to integrate into a country (Sweden) with another language and another culture and to do so with my whole family (her husband and three children have moved with her to Gothenburg) which has left us with indelible memories".

She decided to do her postdoc - doctorate defended it in 2016 under the title degree scroll "Understanding what it means for a person to live with chronic heart failure" - at the Gothenburg Centre for Person-Centred Care (GPCC) at the University of Gothenburg. "For years I had been reading the results of research developing interventions for people with chronic heart failure and other chronic conditions from a person-centred care perspective approach . In our group of research the time had come to design interventions in this field and it was imperative to do so with the same approach as the backbone of our whole research".

"Designing these interventions, which are already complex due to the nature of the phenomena we study, is not easy. So having the expertise of knowledge from a highly competitive centre with which more than 100 multidisciplinary researchers from all over the world collaborate was a great opportunity," he adds.

During her stay at the Swedish campus , Maddi has reviewed the literature to learn more about the area study. "In addition, I have conducted interviews with researchers, healthcare professionals and people with chronic heart failure to get their views on the problem and the possible solution," he says. The final goal will be materialised in the design of a multicentre randomised controlled essay in partnership with the Swedish centre, with the purpose of accessing, later, to competitive calls of research that subsidise its implementation in Spain. "We hope that this intervention will reduce the impact of heart failure on the social dimension of people. An impact that we have observed in various research projects that we have already carried out, both in my thesis doctoral thesis and in subsequent projects," he stresses.

Maddi Olano l at the Gothenburg Centre for Person-Centred Care (GPCC) at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden).

Maddi has also "brought in her suitcase" different strategies to transfer to the classroom, to future nurses, "the approach and the knowledge of person-centred care, which sometimes is not easy to integrate into subjects with a more biomedical character, but it is essential to do so". 

In addition, he has returned with numerous international contacts "that will be the starting point for joint projects and that will favour exchange networks from which other students and professors can benefit".

From Leicester to Oporto via Pamplona

Like Maddi, Maider Belintxon , a lecturer at department in Community and Maternal and Child Nursing at School, was not afraid to do her post-doc in the context of the pandemic and the complicated status for the international mobility .

In her case, she embarked on a second postdoc, taking her three children with her, at the Escola Superior de Enfermagen do Porto (ESEP), under the supervision of Professor Dr Margarida Reis Santos, between May and July 2021. Her first postdoctoral stay was linked to the end of doctorate and took place at the University of Leicester, in 2015, with Professor Nisha Dogra. "One of my focuses of research is Transcultural Nursing. In this field, during my first postdoc I translated, transculturally adapted and validated the tool Cultural Sensitivity Scale, which has just been published in an impact journal."

In this second post-doc, he intended, firstly, to continue exploring and working on this tool - with the financial aid of an expert in subject such as Professor Reis - and to consolidate its application for nursing students in Portugal. In the medium term, deadline would also like to be able to adapt this tool to different contexts.

"Also," he continues, "I left with two clear objectives at area of teaching: to share and integrate new perspectives from teaching in the area Transcultural Nursing; and to establish International Office with ESEP in this field".

Maider assures that, at the level of teaching, the synergy with the host university team was maximum: "This has helped me to broaden the conceptual development and to continue innovating in one of the subjects I teach at School ("Nursing care for human diversity"). I designed this subject during the first post-doc, in parallel to the translation, adaptation and validation of tool. student It was a way for me to get to know the cultural sensitivity of the nursing students at the beginning and at the end of the subject, the main aim of which is that the nursing student is sensitive to diversity, self-reflective, mastering his/her own cultural context and its influence on the interaction with the other person".

Her project from research and the partnership with the Portuguese school will last approximately 2 years, until 2023. As Dr. Margarida Reis explains: "After the success of the work with Professor Belintxon and the favourable opinion of the study by the Ethics committee of our school, we will start the collection of data at the beginning of this new school year. Subsequently, we intend to publish the results in an international journal and to pursue other avenues to disseminate the results.

For the Porto Nursing School, the expert considers that welcoming students and researchers from Europe and from all over the world to its centre "is essential if we want to achieve the objectives of the institution, fulfil its mission statement and add value to the action of academic staff and of the School itself, establishing collaborations as significant as this one, with the School of Nursing of the University of Navarra".

Maider also believes that the "degree program fund" of the research cannot be successfully developed without the support, in this case, of Chair María Egea, department and School, "who have provided financial and, above all, human support to enable us to grow with such enriching stays".

Post-doctorate takes hold in Nursing

Despite the "youth" of doctoral program in Nursing - it was promoted by the then dean Maribel Saracíbar in 2011 and was the first programme created in Spain by a single nursing School -, the two Departments of School have already won an outstanding issue of "medals" in the marathon that is the scientific degree program .

Nuria Esandi is the Vice-Dean of research at School Nursing.

For the vice-dean of research of the School, Nuria Esandi, postdoctoral stays "offer opportunities to expand the scientific skills of the researcher, to increase their network of contacts and to acquire social skills that will help them in the next stage of their degree program (academic) career. At the same time they are a bridge between home university and host university and promote the development of collaborative projects between different groups".

In the department of Nursing Care for Adult Patients, apart from Maddi Olano herself, Mercedes Pérez Díez del Corral did her postdoc in BC (Boston, USA); Ana Choperena moved to BC and to Mass General in Boston as well; Begoña Errasti spent nine months at the University of Alberta, in Canada; and Ana Carvajal chose UCD (University College Dublin) for her stay in 2018.

From summer 2022 Ana Choperena, Begoña Errasti and Maddi Olano have already planned new stays at research.

In the case of department in Community and Maternal and Child Nursing, apart from the two post-doctorates carried out by Maider Belintxon, Professor Navidad Canga moved in 2008 to the Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston College William F. Connell. School of Nursing. Boston. (USA) and in 2011 she was a visiting scholar at Penn University for 6 months.

This academic year 21-22 will also see her director, Professor Miren Idoia Pardavila -who will be at King's College London for 12 months-; Elena Bermejo -posdoc at the National Institute of Public Health (University of Southern Denmark) for 5 months-; Hildegart González -who has obtained the Fellowship in Health Policy and at the Center for Health Policy and Engagement, George Washington University School of Nursing for ; Hildegart González -who has obtained the Fellowship in Health Policy and average at the Center for Health Policy and average Engagement, George Washington University School of Nursing for the full academic year -; and Maider Belintxon herself, who will embark on her third postdoc at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) for 12 months.