President Dawn Hawthorne of the International Association for Human Caring (IAHC) together with Professor Sine M. Herholdt-Lomholdt, Dean Gøril Ursin, and Professor Anne Kasén from the Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences, organizers of the 47th IAHC Conference. Photo: Lise Fagerbakk, Nord University
The 47th time in world history. The first time in Norway. In Bodø. At Nord University.
Earlier this summer, the American organisation “International Association for Human Caring” (IAHC) gathered researchers and students from all over the world in Bodø to talk about human caring.
“The conference was first held in 1978 in the United States and has since been an annual event. It has only once before been held in Europe, in Helsinki, Finland.
Caring is a delicate and vulnerable topic, but I believe we will manage to bring caring into the future, because it lies in our humanity,” says Dean Gøril Ursin at the Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences, Nord University.
PhD candidate Emma Sigridsdatter Jones is attending the conference for the first time and is presenting her research from the municipality of Bodø.
“I examine how nurses work in a virtual healthcare ward in the municipality of Bodø. In particular, I look at the choices nurses make in such a ward—technology or human contact—in the follow-up of elderly people,” she says.
IAHC President Dawn Hawthorne acknowledges that there are major differences in how caring is practiced from country to country.
“In the United States, we are very concerned that caring between people is dying,” she says.
But there are bright spots in the United States as well. At Florida Atlantic University, they teach nurses with a holistic perspective.
“Students learn about compassion and caring from the moment they start their studies. Care matters everywhere, for example in working with troubled youth, which is what I do. Care also touches on mental health,” says Mary Mygatt.
In the United States, we are very concerned that caring between people is dying.
Dawn Hawthorne
The conference was organised by the research group Caring in Healthcare at the Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences, Nord University. With strong support from members of the research group and master’s students, Sine Maria Herholdt-Lomholdt and Anne Kasén at the faculty welcomed 136 participants from around the world: Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Colombia, Brazil, Jamaica, Thailand, the Philippines, Croatia, and Turkey.
They too are concerned about global developments.
“We are in a global situation where compassion is being pushed toward extinction. Everything has to move so fast, and we all have to be so efficient. The challenge is that illness and suffering take their own time—and then everything becomes out of sync with society. We also increasingly have a society that does not handle suffering. It simply has to go away,” says Herholdt-Lomholdt.
We are in a global situation where compassion is being pushed toward extinction.
Sine Herholdt-Lomholdt
That is why research on this topic is particularly important in our time—and something both of them are engaged in. While Herholdt-Lomholdt researches caring and comfort at the end of life, Kasén works with concept analyses and definitions in basic research to provide a language for describing caring.
They have, however, worked together on the conference for nearly a year and a half.
“Without Sine, this wouldn’t have been possible,” Kasén praises—before Sine corrects her:
“We are two in this,” she says with a smile.
