Published: 14-03-2023 15:32 | Updated: 16-03-2023 14:52

Two specialist nursing programmes rated “high quality” by the Swedish Higher Education Authority

Two out of two audited specialist nursing programmes at Karolinska Institutet received a “high quality” rating in an evaluation by the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) published on March 9. The specialisations are pre-hospital nursing and psychiatric care.

Ewa Ehrenborg. Photo: Stefan Zimmerman

“I’m very glad to see that KI’s specialist nursing programme and these two specialisations have been rated so highly by the UKÄ,” says Ewa Ehrenborg, academic vice president for higher education at KI. “It’s important to get an external assessment and acknowledgement of the programmes’ quality in this way.”

In 2022, the UKÄ audited the quality of the specialist nursing programmes offered by Swedish higher education institutions, basing their evaluations on the self-ratings of programme coordinators and teachers, and discussions with the management, teachers and students of each specialisation.

Strengths and challenges

“We’re delighted with the positive ratings that we’ve been given by the UKÄ,” says programme director Lise-Lott Rydström at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, which is responsible for the programmes. “We put a great deal of work into making sure the programmes maintain a high standard, and in the self-ratings we’ve done, we’ve addressed both our strengths and the problems we’ve faced in our work.”

Lise-Lott Rydström. Private photo

In the self-ratings, KI has identified several challenges in the programmes, many of which are shared by other educational establishments. The UKÄ also lists areas in need of improvement, shortcomings that the programmes now intend to remedy. These are:

  • to clarify concrete forms of examination in connection with the assessment of clinical placements
  • to clarify the link between clinical placements, intended learning outcomes, assessment and examination in the syllabuses and in student supervision
  • to place a greater focus on disaster medicine
  • to work harder on bringing equality into the programmes.

“We’ll now go through the evaluations and reflect on how to use them as a platform for our continuing development work and for the programmes’ quality plans,” says Lise-Lott Rydström.

About the UKÄ

The Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) evaluates the quality of higher education, follows up and analyses developments in higher education, and monitors compliance with laws and regulations among universities and higher education institutes.