Åsa Krusebrant awarded the University’s Teaching and Learning Prize

“When I found out that my colleagues had nominated me, I was totally speechless. This is the finest recognition that I can get from them. The fact that I’m actually being awarded the University’s Teaching and Leaning Prize is an honour and an acknowledgment. I’m really passionate about providing a good learning experience for our nursing students, I want them to feel competent and to take care of the patients they meet in their career,” says Åsa Krusebrant.

“Spoiled with wonderful students"

She is also passionate about teaching, about being able to ask students questions and about seeing how they reflect and develop.

“I’m incredibly inspired by the students, they are so wonderful, nice, curious and inquisitive, and they put forward constructive suggestions. Sometimes they are a bit miserable too, that’s part of the learning process and it’s a struggle sometimes. We’re spoiled with wonderful students on the nursing course!”

Åsa Krusebrant studied to become a nurse in Borås, after which she worked at the hospital in Halmstad. She has also practised her profession in the United States and in Saudi Arabia. She also spent 23 years working in Stockholm, where she studied to become a nursing teacher and conducted research at Karolinska Institutet (KI) within a project that involved disseminating and using research results, and she also conducted an evaluation of tactile massage.

The Case method is worth gold worth

Before returning to Halmstad in 2012, she worked at the Red Cross University College in Stockholm in various positions, as international coordinator and course manager for Intensive Care on behalf of the Stockholm County Council. It was here that she gained extensive experience of the case methodology – which she thinks is worth its weight in gold – when she worked on the Intensive Care course.

“Our students will be meeting people who need care because of some kind of suffering. If, for the sake of learning, we work with cases or case histories, it becomes even more interesting to investigate the patient’s situation and needs, and cases also represent a way of working in a group process. The first time that I became aware that we as health professionals like to work with cases was in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was fairly new.”

Åsa Krusebrant was then working at an eye hospital together with nurses from all over the world. She was involved in organising a traditional training day with lectures on HIV and AIDS.

“Our colleagues sat there and dozed off. Then we thought again, and instead created case descriptions to which knowledge content could be referred, for example women infected by their husbands, children who had been infected during a blood transfusion, and so on. With the aid of these cases, the nurses could identify with what happened in society “outside the walls” of the hospital.”

”Creating engagement a major challenge”

Åsa Krusebrant really likes knowledge and she likes to convey it.

“I’ve worked in many different places, and it’s only now that I’m working in first-cycle education. It’s different, the groups of students are very large, but I give my all to put the focus on the student – and I’m stubborn as they come,” she says and continues:

“I’m concerned that if the groups are too big, there will be very superficial learning and too little depth. Creating engagement is a major challenge. And I think it’s important to recognise each student's capacity, because it’s considerable. I also think it’s important to support our new colleagues, I’m very keen to make sure they feel good.”

On the wall of her work room, Åsa Krusebrant has Aristotle’s Triangle, which shows the head, hand and heart. When the three are united, it is “good for the patient”, as she puts it.

“I want our students to be really good nurses, thinking nurses. They shouldn’t just do what others say, but they should think for themselves. What I do here as a teacher should result in a patient receiving high-class care.”

A passionate teacher

Pernilla Nilsson is Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor with special responsibility for first-cycle education at Halmstad University, and she is delighted that Åsa Krusebrant is receiving the Teaching and Leaning Prize:

“Åsa is a passionate teacher who stimulates and inspires her students both in the subject of Nursing and to be a student in higher education. She also strives to inspire her colleagues and contribute to the higher education development work at the University. One example of this is that she has set up a pedagogical book circle for teachers at the school in which she discusses higher education issues with colleagues. Her teaching is of great importance to Halmstad University,” says Pernilla Nilsson.

Text: Kristina Rörström
Photo: Dan Bergmark
Translation: Semantix