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Aims and objectives: This study aims to provide insight into healthcare professionals' lived experiences of digital health competence with the objective of improving the knowledge of how digital health competence is perceived by healthcare professionals. Background: Healthcare professionals need to adjust to the digital era to provide quality and ethical care. Previous research has rarely adopted a healthcare professional's standpoint to describe their perceptions of digital health competence, even though their perspective in how new care practices are designed and implemented is vital. Design: A qualitative descriptive study. Methods: Healthcare professionals (nurses and allied health professionals) from versatile healthcare settings were recruited for individual semi‐structured interviews in Sweden (n = 5) and Finland (n = 15) (spring 2019‐summer 2020). Purposive and convenience sampling was used. Participants' backgrounds were in the public and private sectors. The interviews were transcribed for inductive content analysis. The SRQR guideline guided the study process. Results: Healthcare professionals' perceptions of digital health competence are connected to competence to provide patient‐centric care through digital channels, using technology and digital health systems, interacting with the patient through digital means, evaluating what digital health is and combining digital and traditional methods. Professionals' perceptions of their own digital health competence were divided, with the participants either reporting sufficient competence or perceiving a lack of skills in some specific areas. Conclusions: Healthcare professionals' perceptions of digital health competence focus on the ability to provide patient‐centric care by evaluating the need and possibilities for using digital health services jointly with more traditional methods. This study provides a sound basis for digital health research, but future studies should focus on elucidating factors which affect digital health competence and competence development. Relevance to clinical practice: The results of this study can guide healthcare practices and digital health implementation, as well as function as a basis for instrument or theory development. Health care and nursing leaders should enable the resources to hybrid practices in patient‐centric care provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: For about 40 years, Katie Eriksson developed the caritative caring theory at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. However, a description regarding the most substantial concepts and the relationships between these is lacking and thus needs to be explored. Aims: The aim of the study was twofold: to explore and describe central concepts in the development of caritative caring theory from a postdoctoral perspective and to uncover and explore the relationships between the concepts. Methodology: The design of the study was qualitative with a mixed method approach. The material was collected from a postdoctoral group (n = 38) mainly through electronic questionnaires. The texts were interpreted through manifest and latent content analysis. Findings: The analyses generated five main categories including subcategories. The main categories were 'Caring' 'Ethos', 'Suffering' 'Health' and 'The human being'. The relation between the main concepts compiled as 'A tentative synthesis of the main concepts and the relationships between them'. Conclusion: This study contributes to an understanding of the most fundamental and valuable concepts in the development of caritative theory during its first 40 years according to postdoctoral researchers' perspectives. This study also displays that the concepts ethos and caring have the strongest relationship followed by that between caring and health, indicating the inner core of ethos and love within caring which bears the potential of enhancing the patient's well-being and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The study aims to investigate secular changes in adult height among Nordic reference populations during the last four decades and in parents of Swedish study participants, and to study during which growth phase(s) infancy, childhood or puberty changes in height and tempo occurred.Methods: Length and height data were obtained from publications on populations used as current and previous national height references in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Measurements from birth until adult height and original parental heights of participants in Swedish reference populations born 1956, 1974, and 1990 were used.Results: Adult height has increased progressively in Nordic populations born in 1950s-1990s; for females by 6 mm/decade Norway, 4 mm; Sweden, 6 mm; Finland and Denmark, 7 mm; for males by 9 mm/decade, in Sweden, 5 mm; Finland, 7 mm; Denmark 8 mm; Norway, 15 mm. This was due to more growth during childhood despite earlier timing of mid-puberty. Heights of Swedish parents born 1920s-1960s increased 11 mm/decade for mothers, 14 mm/decade for fathers.Conclusion: The Nordic countries comprise some of the tallest populations in the world yet continue to show a positive secular change in adult height alongside a faster tempo of growth by earlier timing of puberty, highlighting the need to regularly update national height references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Nutritious and attractive school meals can improve health equality and public health. Current official guidelines and recommendations on food and nutrient composition of school meals in 3 Nordic countries; Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, are described and compared with actual practice, ie, availability of foods and nutrients in served reference meals in 3 selected areas in each country. METHODS: A country comparison was made between official guidelines, and actual practice was studied in participating schools. Reference portions of school meals (N = 170) provided in 24 compulsory schools were photographed and weighed. Food and nutrient availability were compared with official guidelines in each country. RESULTS: Emphasis of recommendations on whole‐grain bread in Sweden, whole grains in Finland, and fish in Iceland were reflected in food availability. The energy content of the meals provided was lower than guidelines and there was a large variation in energy content between days. CONCLUSIONS: The guidelines regarding food availability were quite well followed, but the large variation in energy and nutrient content of provided school meals between days indicates a need for standardization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recovery process of arthroplasty patients, their family members play an important role due to short hospital stay and increased age of patients. Family members need to have knowledge to be able to support the patient. The aim of this study was to explore expected and received knowledge in family members of arthroplasty patients and describe the relationships between the differences in received and expected knowledge and background factors, country, information and control preferences and access to knowledge. The study was conducted in six European countries (Cyprus, Greece, Finland, Iceland, Spain and Sweden). The study design was cross-cultural, prospective and comparative with two measurement points: pre-operative and at discharge from hospital. Knowledge Expectations of significant other-scale and Krantz Health Opinion Survey were used before surgery and Received Knowledge of significant other-scale and Access to Knowledge at discharge. Patients undergoing elective hip or knee arthroplasty in seventeen hospitals were asked to identify one family member. The sample size was decided by power calculation. A total of 615 participants answered the questionnaires at both measurements. Family members perceived to receive less knowledge than they expected to have, most unfulfilled knowledge expectations were in the financial, social and experiential dimensions of knowledge. Seventy-four per cent of participants had unfulfilled knowledge expectations. Increased access to information from healthcare providers decreased the difference between received and expected knowledge. Compared to family members in southern Europe, those in the Nordic countries had more unfulfilled knowledge expectations and less access to information from healthcare providers. The evidence from this study highlights the need to involve the family members in the educational approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the association between nurses' characteristics (educational level, country, work title, gender, type of work, age, and length of working experience) and their assessments of individualized care. Design: A cross-sectional comparative survey using questionnaires was employed to sample nurses from seven countries. Methods: Data were collected from orthopedic and trauma nurses from Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States ( N= 1,163, response rate 70%) using the Individualized Care Scale-Nurse (ICS-Nurse) and a sociodemographic questionnaire in 2008. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and general linear models. Results: When compared with practical nurses, registered nurses, length of working experience, and the country of the nurses were associated with assessments of the support of patient individuality in specific nursing activities (ICS-A-Nurse) and country assessments of individuality in the care provided (ICS-B-Nurse). The background and experience within nursing teams together with the country affect the delivery of individualized care. Conclusions: Overall, our findings suggest that nurses' personal attributes have important effects on their assessments of individualized nursing care that will be useful when making context-dependent recruitment decisions. Clinical Relevance: The characteristics of nurses contribute to the care delivered in healthcare organizations. Recognition of these nurse-related factors may help nurse leaders in the development and management of clinical practice. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 2012; 44:3 ©2012 Sigma Theta Tau International. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scand J Caring Sci; 2012; 26; 427-435 Care as a matter of courage: vulnerability, suffering and ethical formation in nursing care The aim of the study was to explore nurses' experience of how their own vulnerability and suffering influence their ethical formation and their capacity to provide professional care when they are confronted with the patient's vulnerability and suffering. Care is shaped in the meeting between human beings. Professional care is informed by the patient's appeal for help as it is expressed in the meeting. Ethical formation is understood as a personal ethical and existential process, resulting in the capacity to provide professional care. A nurse must have the sense of being a complete human being with own personal attributes and sensitivity in order to be able to relate to other people. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 23 experienced nurses from Sweden, Finland and Denmark. The analyses and interpretation were carried out in line with Steinar Kvale's three levels of interpretation. The study clarifies that ethical formation is a union of the nurse's personal attributes and professional qualifications and that ethical formation is developed over time. Moreover, it also demonstrates that the nurse's personal and professional life experiences of vulnerability and suffering influence ethical formation. Vulnerability and suffering have proven to be sensitive issues for nurses, like a sore point that either serve as an eye-opener or cause the development of blind spots. Furthermore, vulnerability, suffering and the sore points are seen to shape the nurse's courage in relation to care. Courage appears to be a significant unifying phenomenon that manifests itself as the courage to help patients face their own vulnerability and suffering, to bear witness to patients' vulnerability and suffering and to have faith in oneself in arguing for and providing professional care. Courage thus seems to play a significant role in nurses' ability to engage in care. Nurses' own vulnerability, suffering and sore points seem to shape their courage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]