Lisa Smeds Alenius

I am an Assistant Senior Lecturer in the research group Leadership in Healthcare and Academia at the Medical Management Center at LIME, where I dedicate my time to research and education. I am a registered nurse and received my PhD in 2019 with a thesis on work environment factors in acute care hospitals and their relationships to quality of care and patient safety.

I am a member of the Doctoral Education Committee at LIME and serve on the steering committee for the Research School in Health Science at KI.

In my research, I study healthcare organizations using a distinct systems perspective. As a researcher and project manager, I lead my own projects and participate in national and international collaborations with the overall goal of understanding the underlying mechanisms of how healthcare work is performed, and how these, in turn, affect patient outcomes, quality of care, and patient safety.

I analyze healthcare as a sociotechnical system where individuals, organizations, and technology interact in various ways. To understand these complex relationships, I use mixed research methods. By combining qualitative methods, to understand the depth and context of healthcare work processes, with quantitative analyses and data visualizations, I map patterns at a systems level. A key area of interest is how we create synergies where employees' competencies are optimally utilized to foster both safe care and sustainable, attractive workplaces.

Past and ongoing projects

In a recently ended, EU-funded Horizon 2020 project Magnet4Europe, we studied the implementation of an organizational model, aimed at improving the work environment and patient care across 65 acute care hospitals in six European countries. I was the project coordinator in the Swedish research team and Work Package leader for the evaluation of the implementation process. In an ongoing project, we continue to study how the implementation evolves over time and to what extent the co-creation of change processes at different organizational levels can impact the sustainability of the changes made.

Other ongoing collaborations include testing a system-level framework that integrates organisational structures and work environment processes to improve patient safety outcomes as well as a project exploring the use of plastic gloves in healthcare through a climate-affecting perspective. 

I am the examiner and program director for the highly rated commissioned education program LOU, which consists of Leadership and Organizational Development 1 (30 credits) and Leadership and Organizational Development 2 (30 credits). Together, these lead to a Master's degree (magisterexamen) in Medical Management. The program is aimed at healthcare managers on different levels.

I also teach regularly in courses at both the undergraduate and advanced levels, in both Swedish and English. I am an experienced and frequent supervisor for one- and two-year master's degree students.