PhD Projects
Healthy aging with long‑term health conditions: Measuring and understanding self-management ability in people over 70 - the SWE PRISM-CC study
PhD-student: Ingrid Olsson
Ingrid OlssonOlder adults are more likely to suffer from one or more long-term health conditions and often experience disruptive life transitions such as retirement and loss of family and friends, which can affect their ability to manage their health conditions in everyday life. Despite this, there is little research on older people's self-management difficulty and their need for self-management support. The purpose of this project is to better understand how older adults with long-term health conditions rate their self-management difficulty and what support they need to maintain good health.
LiBaS- Life Balance: an important outcome for people with neuromuscular diseases
PhD-student: Jacqueline Leenders
The Life Balance study is being conducted in The Netherlands and has two purposes:
1. Measuring Life Balance: Four dimensions of Life Balance can be distinguished: 1) Length, measured in time allocation to activities; 2) width, referring to the amount of activities and life roles; 3) depth, referring to the meaning of activities and life roles; 4) weight, which is the physical or mental burden of activities that people experience. Life Balance is subjectively defined by individuals in terms of how they chose to spend time in valued, obligatory and discretionary activities (Backman 2004). For people with chronic fatigue due to a disease, finding a new balance in what they can do and want to do can be a struggle. Too much and too many strenuous activities can lead to overload and exhaustion, but too few meaningful activities can lead to an imbalance as well.
2. Undertaking a process evaluation of the Individual Managing Fatigue intervention delivered by community based Occupational Therapists
Sensitivity and specificity of a new screening tool for identifying the need of low vision rehabilitation (LVR) services among people with low vision.
PhD-student: Yaser Alnasery
This project aims to find the fewest combination of items that could efficiently identify who need LVR services to develop a screening tool. The screening tool aims to assist clinicians to refer clients – over 12 years old – who will most likely benefit from LVR services.
Low vision assistive technology devices for reading: a scoping review.
PhD-student: Yaser Alnasery
Reading is one of the main occupations that people with low vision name when setting goals and priorities yet, devices to assist with this goal are often abandoned. While many Assistive Technology Devices (ATDs) are available, not much is known about how and why people with low vision are choosing their reading devices. This review aims to understand what ATDs people with low vision prefer to use for reading, as well as how and why these ATDs were selected.
Managing Fatigue in Parkinson`s Disease: Protocol for a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
PhD-student: Neda Alizadeh
Fatigue in Parkinson`s Disease (PD) significantly deteriorates patients’ ability to fulfill their daily roles and activities, especially social participation and employment. Among the available treatments suggested in the literature to address fatigue in PD, the Managing Fatigue: A Six-Week Energy Conservation Course is an evidence-based occupational therapy (OT) program that aims to enable people with chronic conditions to manage the impact of fatigue on their everyday life. Despite the extensive proof of the program’s effectiveness in populations with multiple sclerosis and its potential to be expanded to other similar conditions, efficacy of this program has not been established in PD.
This randomized controlled pilot study will evaluate the feasibility, and the preliminary effectiveness of the individual format of the Managing Fatigue program, named “Managing Fatigue: The Individual Program (MFIP)”.
