Keynote speakers

Jonna Bornemark 

Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Studies in Practical Knowledge at Södertörn University, Sweden
Jonna Bornemark has published three monographies, the latest is Det omätbaras renässans: en uppgörelse med pedanternas världsherravälde (The Renaissance of the Unmeasurable), Volante, 2018. She has also published 13 anthologies, for example Horsecultures in Transformation: The Ethical Question, (with Petra Andersson and Ulla Ekström von Essen), Routledge, 2019 and Phenomenology of Pregnancy, (with Nicholas Smith), Södertörn Philosophical Studies, Huddinge: Södertörn University, 2016. She is also a frequent guest in several radio shows and a writer in daily press. 
Her research interests are within the fields of practical knowledge, phenomenology, posthumanism and philosophy of religion. In her writings she discuss among other things the limits of measurablility, the possibilities of judgement, subjectivity and “Bildung”. But also the relation between human and other animals, pregnancy and embodiment.

Keynote abstract: The Limits of Measurability and the Possibility of Judgement in Contemporary Health Care What happens when we limit our understanding of reason to a calculating competence? In this presentation I will take the starting-point in Nicholas of Cusa’s understanding of reason, knowledge, and not-knowing, in order to analyze the contemporary Swedish situation where NPM organizes health care. Which ideas lies behind this system and its understanding of reason? Which problems does it create? What is accepted as knowledge? And how is it related to a long tradition of western modernity?

Inger Ekman 

RN, PhD, senior professor, former director and founder of University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-Centred Care (GPCC) www.gpcc.gu.se, in Sweden

In 2007, Inger Ekman was appointed full professor in Care Science at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg. During the period 2006-2010, she was head of Institute of Health and Care Sciences, and 2010-2012 vice dean at the Sahlgrenska academy. Inger Ekman's research focuses on communication and symptoms in patients with long term illness and evaluation of person-centred care interventions.
Ekman is since 2016 the coordinator of COST 15222 (www.costcares.eu) a European initiative, involving 28 partner countries, on testing implementation of person-centred care and health promotion within the frame of cost containment with maintained or improved quality of care in five countries in Europe.

Keynote abstract: Person-centred care guided by ethics
Person-centred care requires ethics as a basis for the organisation of care and care actions. Ethics can be used as a guide in daily care and particularly in the moral dilemmas care professionals often face. Since each patient is understood as a unique individual, care actions can never be exactly the same for each patient, even though diagnosis and treatment are included as determining aspects. Examples on how ethical guidance has been used in research and practice will be presented.

Elvis Imafidon 

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Ambrose Alli University, Nigeria
Dr Elvis Imafidon teaches in the Department of Philosophy, Ambrose Alli University in Nigeria. He is a Fellow of the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study (JIAS). His research generally centres on African ontology and ethics and modern Western philosophy with specific interests in issues of alterity, disability and gender. He is concerned with the extent to which African concepts of reality affect the African idea of the good, and the implications of African ontology for concepts such as corruption, alterity, disability, difference, personhood and gender. In the past few years, he has been specifically concerned with the implications of African ontology for the albinotic other in Africa, he is the author and editor of several books most recent of which are African Philosophy and the Otherness of Albinism (Routledge 2019) and editor of Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference (Springer 2019). At the IPONS 2020 Conference, Elvis will be presenting a keynote titled “Beyond Continental and African Hegemonies of Personhood and the Nursing of the Other” where he will explore hegemonies in person-centred healthcare systems and how such can be overcome.

Keynote abstract: Beyond Continental and African Hegemonies of Personhood and the Nursing of the Other
In this keynote, I address the challenges that the ideological hegemonies of personhood imbibed by nurses and patients could pose for the nursing profession in a person-centred health care system, particularly in the care for the other. Dominant or hegemonic conceptions of personhood in particular spaces often consist of self-contained ideas and essential ontological and normative properties of what it means to be a person, lack of which results in the denial of personhood and the othering of a being as a non-person. The other as the residue of such self-contained notions of personhood is most often denied of the quality of care that the one who fits within such conceptions enjoy. For nurses and other health-care workers to overcome this discrimination of the one from the other, they must overcome hegemonies and ideological dominance and be more open to alternative viewpoints and theories. I develop these points by drawing from the rich ideological traditions of Continental and African philosophies. I begin by showing how hegemony reigns in these traditions not only in the conception of a person in general, but interestingly, in the conception of a nurse-person in particular. I then proceed to show that the Continental and African conceptions of personhood consist of self-contained notions of bodily and non-bodily features of a person. I then show further the implication of such conceptions of the person for the understanding of, and care for, the other in a person-centred health care system. I instantiate this with the othering of persons with albinism (PWAs) in African thought and a conservative conception of person in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I conclude by highlighting aspects of Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of alterity that are essential in overcoming hegemonies of personhood that inhibit care for the other.

Bengt Kristensson Uggla

Amos Anderson Professor in Philosophy, Culture, and Management , Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland and Visiting Professor at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. After defending his doctoral thesis on Paul Ricoeur at Lund University (Sweden) in 1994, he has been associated with a number of European and American universities, together with significant management positions, such as Dean at the IFL (Swedish Institute of Management). Bengt has developed a kind of cross-disciplinary hermeneutics in a great number of books and articles and is a frequently invited speaker in academia and society. His latest monograph was published in fall 2019: En strävan efter sanning: vetenskapens teori och praktik [A Quest for Truth: Science in Theory and Practice].

Keynote abstract: WHAT MAKES US HUMAN? An Ethical Configuration of Personhood beyond Naturalism and Phenomenology. The aim of this presentation is to elaborate on a philosophical anthropology for person-centered health care from the perspectives of a “broken” ontology. If we conceptualize personhood beyond naturalistic and phenomenological reductions, and instead use the narrative path from “what” to “who” in a way that establishes “heterogeneous synthesis” between naturalism and phenomenology, we will find creative alternatives to articulate what makes us human. Beyond the decentered subject of anti-humanism and the centered subject of humanism, the perspectives opens up for a “wounded” cogito capable of imagining “oneself as another”. An understanding of the capable human being (homo capax), according to an ethical configuration of personhood, may be encapsulated in the aim for the good life, with and for others, in just institutions (Ricoeur).

Richard (Rick) Sawatzky 

PhD, RN, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Person-Centred Outcomes
Rick is Professor at the Trinity Western University School of Nursing. He holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Person-Centred Outcomes. He is Head of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Program at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences and leads the Patient-Centred Measurement Methods Cluster with the British Columbia SUPPORT Unit, a multi-partner organization that carries out patient-oriented research in order to improve healthcare outcomes for all patients. Rick’s research focuses on methods for person-centred outcome measurement and the use of quality of life assessment tools, with a particular emphasis on people who have chronic life-limiting illnesses and their family caregivers. Examples of current research include projects on statistical methods for person-centred outcomes measurement; the integration of electronic quality of life assessments in clinical practice; knowledge translation regarding the use of person-centred outcomes; and a palliative approach in nursing.

Keynote abstract: Measurement is value-laden: Considerations for person-centred outcomes in health care
Standardized measurement instruments, known as patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), are increasingly used to measure health outcomes (e.g., symptoms, physical functioning, and psychological, social and existential wellbeing) from the perspective of the person who is experiencing those outcomes. Information obtained from PROMs is used to compare differences between people and within people over time. But how do we ensure that such comparisons based on PROMs lead to valid healthcare decisions? I will address this question by arguing that PROMs are not inherently person-centred. Rather the validity of inferences, decisions and actions based on PROMs requires a person-centred perspective that incorporates information about individual differences that explain how people interpret and respond to questions used to measure their health outcomes.