Department of Caring and Ethics

About the department

The department contributes to educating reflected and highly qualified professional practitioners, and shall be an arena where questions and dilemmas relevant to care and ethics are explored and challenged. Our approach to these issues is based on the understanding that relating to people in vulnerable situations and their basic existential conditions is constitutive for professional practice.

We identify bases and terms for health and care work and understand these as connections between bodily, emotional and existential experiences and conditions in culture and society. We explore subjective experiences of health, illness and suffering in all phases of life, and emphasise dialogic meetings between patients, professionals and next of kin.

The department has competence spanning theoretical and clinical specialisation, interdisciplinary, critical and innovative approaches to care and ethics, and method development.

Research areas at the department:

• Bases for and terms of care in today’s welfare
• Health, suffering and life phenomena
• Nursing science – theoretical and clinical
• Professional development in relational work
• Care ethics, ethical practices in health and care services
• Qualitative method development