Henna Haapa Hybinette, doctoral student at Health Informatics

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background. What did you do before you started your doctoral studies? 

I am a registered nurse with experience in pediatric care. I have mainly worked in neonatal care and with clinical trials in pediatric oncology. I also have a master’s degree in health informatics from KI from 2015 and have been working as a health informatician at Karolinska University Hospital since 2018. 

How did you become interested in doing research and what made you want to be a doctoral student at our department LIME?

Ever since high school I have been interested in research but have always wanted to do a PhD on a subject that truly interests me. Through my studies as a doctoral student, I now have the chance to contribute to both the research field and clinical work in the hospital. As I was a student at LIME earlier, I knew the researchers and the areas of research that they are interested in. 

If you were to describe your current doctoral research project in one or two sentences for a class of eight-year-olds, how would you describe it? 

My research focuses on how nursing documentation can be made easier with the use of standardized language (nursing terminologies) and international standards that can be used to create a documentation system. Together, terminologies and standards can support nurses’ documentation of a patient’s nursing needs and even makes it easier to reuse information for e.g. research and quality improvement.

Can you tell us about your PhD research project? What makes your research stand out? There is a lot of research on how the introduction and use of electronic health record (EHR) systems affects clinicians and workflows. However, very little is known if and how the nursing process and terminologies are used in Sweden or if they are embedded in the existing EHR systems. Few computer applications or EHRs today are based on international, open information standards but rather use a vendor-specific standard which makes it difficult to exchange information between systems and caregivers, leading to double documentation and difficulties finding relevant information when it is needed. We want to see if a system based on international standards and the nursing process can facilitate both documentation and reuse of information. Combining ICNP, an internationally standardized nursing terminology, and openEHR as an internationally standardised information structure, and evaluating nurses' perceptions of the resulting prototype for primary and secondary use, will provide new insights and guidance for the implementation of structured nursing documentation. Using an international standard like openEHR allows for shared national and international development and ease of reuse of the work produced in my doctoral project.

What are you working on right now? 

At the moment I am writing my first article which will take up a lot of my time. As I only do my research part-time, I will also be working closely with clinicians at the hospital and also lecturing on nursing informatics and nursing classification both for clinical nurses in different hospitals in Stockholm and for specialist nursing students in the university. 

What is the best /most interesting part of being a doctoral student?

The most exciting part of combining my PhD studies with the same area of work is that I get to use the skills that I gain during my studies to educate clinicians and colleagues in the hospital, and I also receive a lot of insights from the clinicians that are a valuable addition to my studies.

Can you describe the challenges (if any) in being a student at doctoral level? 

It can be stressful at times to combine both studies and work. However, it also gives me the opportunity to take more time for reflection as I will not be completing my studies in 4 years of full-time studies. And it also gets a bit fragmented at times having to focus on both studies and work. My advice is to have discussions with both your supervisors and managers at work to ensure good continuity in both parts. It is good if both your employer and research group can be flexible on how much time you spend on your studies depending on the intensity of either work or your studies.

What is your relationship with other doctoral students like? 

One of the downsides of being employed elsewhere is that there is very little time for socializing with other PhD students though I can see the benefits of doing that. I also have two children which makes it difficult to find time for socializing in general.

What do you like to do when you are not doing research? Hobbies, activities etc? 

I have two children so of course family life takes up a lot of my free time. I am also the chairman of the Swedish Association for Nursing Informatics, so I work with the same questions even on my free time. I also love spending time in the archipelago to load my batteries, and I also try to do winter bathing as often as I can.

What do you envision yourself doing after graduation? 

I think I have the best job in the world where I get to combine my clinical knowledge with my interest in improving documentation for clinicians. I hope to have the possibility to use my expertise more on a regional and national level and maybe work more with strategic questions in the future and develop the field of nursing informatics in Sweden.

Do you have any advice for someone thinking about applying for doctoral studies? 

If you have an interest in research – do it! It has truly been an interesting experience so far and I have met so many interesting PhD students during the courses and learnt more about other areas of research that I had no idea of.