The overall aim of this licentiate thesis was to describe encounters in hospital care from the perspectives of nurses and patients. It focuses specifically on nurses’ views of shortcomings in patient-care encounters in one hospital (I) and the meanings of participation in hospital care as narrated by patients (II). Three focus group discussions with 15 registered nurses were conducted, and data were analyzed using thematic content analysis (I). Narrative interviews were conducted with 15 patients in hospital care, and the interviews were analyzed with a phenomenological hermeneutic interpretation (II). This licentiate thesis shows that a shared understanding is considered as central for both the nurses and the patients in the hospital-care encounter. The nurses demonstrate the need to understand, to create space, and also to be available for vulnerable patients. The patients describe the need to be understood and to understand their own situations. This thesis suggests that positive encounters in hospital care imply that nurses need to take responsibility for creating a mutual dialogue where the patient experiences himself or herself as a co-creator in a trustful context. When nurses acknowledge and confirm the vulnerability of their patients, it becomes possible to support them to participate in an active manner. A well-functioning team, as well as a coherent environment, is, in this thesis, understood as a precondition for positive hospitalcare encounters.

Introduktion: Mäns våld mot kvinnor är ett folkhälsoproblem. Våld i nära relation ger upphov till akuta och långsiktiga hälsoproblem hos offren. Syfte: Undersöka kvinnors upplevelse av bemötandet från hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal efter att ha blivit utsatta för våld i nära relation. Metod: För att besvara studiens syfte användes en deskriptiv design med en allmän litteraturstudie som metod grundad på originalartiklar med kvalitativa studier. Resultat: Resultatet delades in i två teman; positiva och negativa bemötanden. Positiva bemötanden delades in i kategorierna empati och fungerande skyddsnät. Känsla av empati skapades när bemötandet upplevdes som medkännande, när personalen tog sig tid, var stöttande och motiverande, utförde bekräftande handlingar och vid en god personal-patient relation. Känslan av att sjukvården fungerade som skyddsnät framkom när bemötandet var informativt, professionellt, när kvinnorna erhöll praktisk hjälp och när kvinnan upplevde känslan av tillit. Negativa bemötanden kategoriserades till negativa känslor, diskriminering och bristande skyddsnät. Negativa känslor uppstod när kvinnan upplevde en ej fungerande personal-patient relation och när bemötandet var nedvärderande, empatilöst, skuldbeläggande och oförstående. Diskriminering upplevdes när personalen osynliggjorde våldet eller när patienten upplevde kulturellt förtryck. Känsla av bristande skyddsnät upplevdes när kvinnorna kände sig svikna av systemet, upplevde brist på tid och information och ett icke- professionellt bemötande. Slutsats: Våldsutsatta kvinnor uppfattade bemötandet från hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal på olika sätt. Majoriteten upplevde bemötandet som negativt så vidare forskning behövs i området för att identifiera vilken kunskap och utbildning personalen behöver. Detta för att kvinnan ska få bästa möjliga förutsättningar för ett gott bemötande och bra vård efter våld i nära relation. / Introduction: Violence against women is a public health issue. Intimate partner violence generates acute and long-term health problems. Aim: Investigate women's experience of treatment received from health care professionals after being exposed to intimate partner violence. Method: A literature study with descriptive design using original articles with qualitative studies was used to answer the aim of the study. Result: The result was divided in two themes; positive and negative experiences. Positive experiences were divided into categories empathy and functioning safety net. The feeling of empathy emerged when the encounter was experienced as compassionate, the personnel took their time, was supportive and motivated, performed confirming actions and there was a satisfying professional-patient relation. The feeling of a functional safety net emerged when the encounter was informative, professional, the women obtained practical help and a feeling of trust was experienced. Negative experiences were categorized to negative emotions, discrimination and lack of safety net. Negative emotions occurred when women experienced dysfunctional professional-patient relation and the encounter was derogatory, unempathetic, blaming and the professionals did not understand the women’s situation. Discrimination was experienced when the personnel overlooked the violence or the patient experienced cultural oppression. Lack of safety net was experienced when women felt betrayed by the system, lack of time and information and not receiving a professional encounter. Conclusion: Women exposed to violence experienced treatment from healthcare professionals in different ways. The majority had negative experiences which reveals that further research is needed to identify the gaps in knowledge and to further educate personnel who are active in healthcare.

No description available.

No description available.

Bakgrund: Endometrios är en sjukdom som påverkar kvinnor i fertil ålder och ger symtom som bland annat smärta, magproblematik och blödningar. Sjukdomen är relativt vanlig men kan vara svår att upptäcka då symtom ofta kan vara diffusa och likartade med andra sjukdomar som kan då kan orsaka försenad diagnos och felbehandlingar. Ofta krävs flera läkarbesök och långa utredningar för att diagnos skall ställas. Många kvinnor kan därför uppleva brister i vården när vägen till att få hjälp kan vara oerhört lång och plågsam.  Syfte: Att undersöka hur kvinnor med endometrios upplever vårdens bemötande. Metod: En kvalitativ litteraturöversikt.  Resultat: Åtta artiklar valdes till denna litteraturöversikt. Tre teman identifierades utifrån dessa artiklar: patientens upplevelse – en evig kamp, mötet med vården samt vårdens betydelse. Resultatet baseras på den långa kampen till behandling och diagnos som kan orsaka uppkomst av lidande samt vårdens betydelse som främjar välbefinnande. Slutsats: I mötet med dessa kvinnor som lider av endometrios måste vården öka sin kunskap med förbättrad kommunikation och vägledning. En djupare förståelse och uppmärksamhet kring kvinnornas upplevelser krävs hos sjuksköterskor och berörd sjukvårdspersonal för att kunna bemöta och vårda dessa kvinnor. / Endometriosis is a disease that affects women and causes symptoms such as pain, stomach problems and bleeding. The disease is relatively common but can be difficult to detect as symptoms can often be diffuse and similar to other diseases which can then cause delayed diagnosis and incorrect treatment. Several doctor visits and lengthy investigations are often required for a diagnosis to be made. Many women can therefore experience shortcomings in care when the road to getting help can be extremely long and painful.

According to philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, alterity can exist only in its infinite and fluid nature in which the aspects of it that exceed the human ability to fully understand it remain unthematized in language. Levinas sees the encounter between self and other as the moment that instigates ethical responsibility, a moment so vital to avoiding mastering what is external to oneself that it should replace Western philosophy’s traditional emphasis on being as philosophy’s basis, or “First Philosophy.” Levinas’s conceptualization of language as a fluid, non-mastering saying, which one must continually re-enliven against a congealing and mastering said, is at the heart of his ethical project of relating to the other of alterity with ethical responsibility, or proximity. The imaginative poetic language that some contemporary poetry enacts, resonates with Levinas’s ethical motivations and methods for responding to alterity. The following project investigates facets of this question in relation to Levinas: how do the contemporary poets Peter Blue Cloud, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, and Robert Hass use poetic language uniquely to engage with alterity in an ethical way, thus allowing it to retain its mystery and infinite nature? I argue that by keeping language alive in a way similar to a Levinasian saying, which avoids mastering otherness by attending to its uniqueness and imaginatively engaging with it, they enact an ethical response to alterity. As a way of unpacking these ideas, this inquiry will investigate the compelling, if unsettled, convergence in the work of Levinas and that of Blue Cloud, Graham, Harjo, and Hass by unfolding a number of Levinasian-informed close readings of major poems by these writers as foregrounding various forms of Levinasian saying. / Ph. D.

This thesis explores the Mbuti Pygmies, a sub-group of the Pygmy peoples, one of the main ethnic groups of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Mbuti Pygmies are settled mostly in the Ituri rainforest, and are, with regard to Christian mission, still unreached and unchurched. The oversight of the churches vis-à-vis these people is highlighted, through this thesis, as a challenge to Christian mission. This challenge is a result of the way Christian mission is understood and undertaken in DRC, namely in the selective and exclusive way of missioning, according to which some peoples are targeted and others forsaken. Churches in the DRC shy away from the Mbuti Pygmies probably because, on the one hand, these forest dwellers belong to the group of Pygmies whose existence as full human beings is enigmatic and very controversial. Because of the uniqueness of the Pygmy peoples in terms of physical features, culture, and way of life, on the other hand, the non-Pygmy peoples, including Christians, suffer from a kind of complex of superiority that creates in them a spirit of discrimination against the Mbuti Pygmies. As the Mbuti Pygmies are discriminated against even by Christians, it is very difficult for them to be taken into account within the mission agendas of the churches. This challenge to Christian mission is highlighted by two facts. Firstly, Christian mission is designed for all the nations to which the Mbuti Pygmies belong. Secondly, the churches, with their missional mandate to all the nations, shy away from the Mbuti Pygmies as if these people were outside the scope of Christian mission and, thus, unworthy of God’s grace and love.To remedy this challenge, with the aim of implementing Christian mission in the DRC, this study suggests a missional encounter as a way forward to addressing the Mbuti Pygmies. In practice, this may be implemented through the missionary conversion, the right perception of the Mbuti Pygmies as being fully made in the “image of God” and fully part of the “all nations”, promoting formal education among the Mbuti Pygmies, and sustaining the churches by an integrated theological education. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This thesis explores the Mbuti Pygmies, a sub-group of the Pygmy peoples, one of the main ethnic groups of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Mbuti Pygmies are settled mostly in the Ituri rainforest, and are, with regard to Christian mission, still unreached and unchurched. The oversight of the churches vis-à-vis these people is highlighted, through this thesis, as a challenge to Christian mission. This challenge is a result of the way Christian mission is understood and undertaken in DRC, namely in the selective and exclusive way of missioning, according to which some peoples are targeted and others forsaken. Churches in the DRC shy away from the Mbuti Pygmies probably because, on the one hand, these forest dwellers belong to the group of Pygmies whose existence as full human beings is enigmatic and very controversial. Because of the uniqueness of the Pygmy peoples in terms of physical features, culture, and way of life, on the other hand, the non-Pygmy peoples, including Christians, suffer from a kind of complex of superiority that creates in them a spirit of discrimination against the Mbuti Pygmies. As the Mbuti Pygmies are discriminated against even by Christians, it is very difficult for them to be taken into account within the mission agendas of the churches. This challenge to Christian mission is highlighted by two facts. Firstly, Christian mission is designed for all the nations to which the Mbuti Pygmies belong. Secondly, the churches, with their missional mandate to all the nations, shy away from the Mbuti Pygmies as if these people were outside the scope of Christian mission and, thus, unworthy of God’s grace and love.To remedy this challenge, with the aim of implementing Christian mission in the DRC, this study suggests a missional encounter as a way forward to addressing the Mbuti Pygmies. In practice, this may be implemented through the missionary conversion, the right perception of the Mbuti Pygmies as being fully made in the “image of God” and fully part of the “all nations”, promoting formal education among the Mbuti Pygmies, and sustaining the churches by an integrated theological education. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This thesis aims to solve the mathematical inverse problem of characterizing sea waves based on the responses obtained from a marine vessel sailing under certain sea conditions. By researching this problem the thesis contributes to the marine industry by improving products that are using ocean behavior for controlling ship's dynamics. Knowledge about the current state of the sea, such as the wave frequency and height, is important for navigation, control, and for the safety of a vessel. This information can be retrieved from specialized weather reports. However, such information is not at all time possible to obtain during a voyage, and if so usually comes with a certain delay. Therefore this thesis seeks solutions that can estimate on-line the waves' state using methods in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The specific investigation methods are Transfer Functions augmented with Genetic Algorithm, Artificial Neural Networks and Case-Based Reasoning. These methods have been configured and validated using the n-fold cross validation method. All the methods have been tested with an actual implementation. The algorithms have been trained with data acquired from a marine simulation program developed in Simulink. The methods have also been trained and tested using monitored data acquired from an actual ship sailing on the Baltic Sea as well as wave data obtained from a buoy located nearby the vessel's route. The proposed methods have been compared with state-of-the art reports in order evaluate the novelty of the research and its potential applications in industry. The results in this thesis show that the proposed methods can in fact be used for solving the inverse problem. It was also found that among the investigated methods it is the Transfer Function augmented with Genetic Algorithm which yields best results. This Master Thesis is conducted under the Master of Engineering Program in Robotics at Mälardalens högskola in Västerås, Sweden. The thesis was proposed by Q-TAGG R&D AB in Västerås, Sweden, a company which specializes in marine vessel dynamics research.

Cette dissertation explore la carrière de la rencontre manquée Lacanienne dans la littérature canonique américaine du dix-neuvième siècle à travers le prisme de la psychanalyse, la déconstruction, le postmodernisme et le postcolonialisme. Je me concentre particulièrement sur La Lettre Écarlate de Hawthorne et Moby-Dick de Melville, en montrant comment ils sont investis dans l'économie narrative de la rencontre manquée, l'économie de ce qui est au-delà de la symbolisation et l'assimilation. L’introduction examine les contours et les détours historiques, philosophiques et théoriques du concept de la rencontre manquée. Cette dissertation a donc deux objectifs: d'une part, elle tente d'examiner le statut et la fonction de la rencontre manquée dans la littérature américaine du dix-neuvième siècle, et d’autre part, elle explore comment la théorisation de la rencontre manquée pourrait nous aider à aller au-delà de la théorisation binaire qui caractérise les scènes géopolitiques actuelles. Mon premier chapitre sur La Lettre Écarlate de Hawthorne, tente de tracer la carrière du signifiant comme une navette entre l'archive et l'avenir, entre le sujet et l'objet, entre le signifiant et le signifié. Le but de ce chapitre est de rendre compte de la temporalité du signifiant et la temporalité de la subjectivité et d’expliquer comment ils répondent à la temporalité du tuché. En explorant la dimension crypto-temporelle de la rencontre manquée, ce chapitre étudie l'excès de cryptes par la poétique (principalement prosopopée, anasémie, et les tropes d'exhumation). Le deuxième chapitre élabore sur les contours de la rencontre manquée. En adoptant des approches psychanalytiques et déconstructives, ce chapitre négocie la temporalité de la rencontre manquée (la temporalité de l'automaton et de la répétition). En explorant la temporalité narrative (prolepse et analepse) conjointement à la psycho-poétique du double, ce chapitre essaie de dévoiler les vicissitudes de la mélancolie et la “dépression narcissique” dans Moby-Dick (en particulier la répétition d'Achab lors de sa rencontre originelle dénarrée ou jamais racontée avec le cachalot blanc et sa position mélancolique par rapport à l'objet qu'il a perdu). En exposant la nature du trauma comme une rencontre manquée, dont les résidus se manifestent symptomatiquement par la répétition (et le doublement), ce chapitre explique le glissement de la lettre (par l'entremise du supplément et de la différance). Le troisième chapitre élargit la portée de la rencontre manquée pour inclure les Autres de l'Amérique. Le but principal de ce chapitre est d'évaluer les investitures politiques, culturelles, imaginaires et libidinales de la rencontre manquée dans le Réel, le Symbolique nationale des États-Unis et la réalité géopolitique actuelle. Il traite également de la relation ambiguë entre la jouissance et le Symbolique: la manière dont la jouissance anime et régit le Symbolique tout en confondant la distinction entre le Réel et la réalité et en protégeant ses manœuvres excessives. / This dissertation explores the career of the Lacanian missed encounter in canonical nineteenth-century American literature through the lens of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, postmodernism, and postcolonialism. In particular, I concentrate on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Melville’s Moby-Dick, showing how they are invested in the narrative economy of the missed encounter, the economy of that which is beyond symbolization and assimilation. The introductory chapter investigates the historical, philosophical, and theoretical contours and detours of the concept of the missed encounter. This dissertation, then, has two goals: on the one hand, it attempts to examine the status and function of the missed encounter in nineteenth-century American literature, and on the other, it explores how theorizing the missed encounter might help us move beyond the binarist theorization that characterizes the current geopolitical scenes. My first chapter on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter attempts to map the career of the signifier as a shuttling between the archive and the future, between the subject and the object, and between the signifier and the signified. The aim of this chapter is to account for the temporality of the signifier and the temporality of subjectivity and how they meet the temporality of the Tuché. By exploring the crypto-temporal dimension of the missed encounter, this chapter studies the excess of crypts through poetics (mainly prosopopeia, anasemia, and tropes of exhumation). The second chapter elaborates the contours of the missed encounter. This chapter approaches, from psychoanalytic and deconstructive viewpoints, the temporality of the missed encounter (the temporality of automaton and repetition). By exploring the narrative temporality (prolepsis and analepsis) in conjunction with the psycho-poetics of the double, this chapter attempts to lay bare the vicissitudes of melancholia and “narcissistic depression” in Moby-Dick (especially Ahab’s repetition of his unnarrated or disnarrated original encounter with the White Whale and his melancholic position in relation to the object he lost). By exposing the nature of trauma as a missed encounter, the residues of which manifest symptomatically through repetition (and doubling), this chapter explains the glissement of the letter (through the work of the supplement and différance). Chapter three broadens the scope of the missed encounter to the Others of America. The main purpose of this chapter is to assess the political, cultural, imaginary, and libidinal investitures of the missed encounter in the Real, the national Symbolic of the United States, and the current geopolitical reality. It also deals with the ambiguous relationship between jouissance and the Symbolic: the way in which jouissance animates and governs the Symbolic, while at the same time it blurs the boundary lines between the Real and reality and protects its excessive maneuvers.