Ongoing Projects

In Austria, an estimated 169,000 people live with dementia. Despite its prevalence, dementia remains frequently tabooed and stigmatized in society, and media often reinforce negative representations. The Austrian Dementia Strategy therefore emphasizes social participation and self-determination as key objectives. Awareness and educational measures - particularly for students - can strengthen knowledge, empathy, and an open attitude within society.

Nurses have overall responsibility for the nursing process. Newly graduated nurses can feel overwhelmed by this responsibility, especially when starting their careers. The assignment on learning wards is intended to strengthen the nursing skills and prepare them for a successful career start. Learning wards are selected clinical wards where nursing students assume responsibility for the management, care and support of patients to put into practice the knowledge and skills they have learned during their theoretical training.

In the project “SARA – self-determined, active, risk-free aging,” a team from the University of Applied Sciences for Health Professions Upper Austria is providing scientific support for the development of an innovative AI-based fall detection system.

International nursing professionals – including those from the Philippines – play an important role in maintaining high-quality long-term care in Austria. As a result, they are actively recruited for the long-term care sector in the province of Upper Austria. It is essential, however, that these professionals are not regarded just as a response to workforce shortages. Instead, sustainable integration – both within the workplace and in the broader community – as well as their long-term retention in Upper Austria must be ensured. Insufficient workplace integration can create significant uncertainty, affecting both international nursing professionals and their colleagues.

Phytochemicals, also known as secondary plant metabolites, play an integral role in our daily lives, as evidenced by the colours, scents and flavours of plant-based foods. Not only do they protect plants, they also enrich our lives through their sensory properties and potential health benefits. The project 'Kids Explore Superpowers in Plants' introduces children and adolescents to these fascinating substances by combining scientific research with hands-on educational experiences. Our goal is to raise awareness of scientific work among pupils and to spark their interest in food as a research topic.

The care system in Austria is facing major challenges. The number of people over the age of 80 will increase significantly by 2030. Informal caregivers play a central role but experience high levels of burden. The Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection is pursuing a clear strategy with the guiding principle “digital before outpatient before inpatient.”. However, it remains unclear to what extent eHealth interventions effectively contribute to reducing caregiver burden.

As a follow-up project to the Dyn-Sit-Pain study, this research aims to investigate the overall health as well as the physical and mental well-being through dynamic office chairs. The development of an innovative dynamic office chair concept will be professionally and scientifically supported, and the developed prototypes will be examined within the framework of usability studies.

Following a cooperation request a treaty was signed between medical staff of the Hemodialysis Ward (Steyr hospital), the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (Steyr hospital) and the University of Applied Sciences for Health Professions Upper Austria. This cooperation comprises of six bachelor theses, proposals are already accomplished. Currently, the students are writing their theses, which should be finished at the end of January 2025.

There is a large and even growing need for qualified nurses to provide high-quality care for people with dementia in the healthcare system. At the same time, studies show that nursing students have low preferences working in dementia care.

Recruiting physiotherapists and timely filling vacancies are challenging for inpatient healthcare facilities. Understanding potential applicants’ preferences regarding future employment is crucial for making job offers and work conditions more attractive.

Assessment tools to evaluate the communicative abilities of people with dementia for healthcare professionals: a scoping review.

People with dementia are already affected by impairments in their communication skills in the early stages of the disease. This can lead to misunderstandings in daily communicative situations with relatives or carers. These problems in social interactions lead to people with dementia reducing their social contacts and participating less in leisure activities. Relationships, including with family members, can be difficult to maintain and lead to social withdrawal, which can negatively impact the quality of life of those affected and their relatives. One way of counteracting social withdrawal is to intensify the communication opportunities offered by family members or carers. To maintain dialogue, it is crucial to specifically collect and assess communication skills.

Clinical computed tomography (CT) is a highly established diagnostic imaging tool in healthcare. Due to its high impact on medical diagnosis and therapy planning, the technology is evolving rapidly. ALARA (“As low as reasonably achievable”) in terms of radiation exposure for medical purposes with the primary intention to bring health benefits to the individual is one of the most important principles for acquiring medical images with radiation exposure. Hence, the optimization of image acquisition is an important part of clinical practice and is declared within the medical radiation protection regulation (§4 (1) MedSchV). In addition, the medical radiation regulation expels reference values for diagnostic CT imaging as a minimum requirement in clinical practice. However, due to new hardware technologies in computer tomography scanners as well as new acquisition and reconstruction techniques of imaging data the potential reduction of radiation exposure in medical CT imaging expands. Furthermore, especially with the availability of integrated photon counting detectors into clinical scanners, enhanced quantitative approaches lead to better tissue characterization and can add additional diagnostic information to raise the disease prognosis.

Thermal spa and health destinations in the Bavarian-Austrian program area as well as the entire health tourism industry are suffering massively from an enormous shortage of skilled workers. At least since the Covid-19 pandemic many specialists have left their companies, regions or even their industries ꟷ individual destinations can no longer solve these challenges on their own.

It is therefore important to join forces to counteract this exodus with sustainable strategies and measures in order to (re)gain urgently needed professionals and retain them within the companies in the long run, to improve current trainings and to continue education programs in line with demands, and to make the basic working and living conditions in the destinations more attractive.

Professional Identity (PI) has been defined as an ongoing transformative evolutionary process. PI is the adoption of specific beliefs, attributes and (ethical) values and experiences to become a member of a profession or the way individuals „think and act in line with the… group, … expressed by normative behaviour and loyalty”. Lacking clarity of PI can lead negatively to a professional’s attenuated perceived self-value, can weaken the profession itself and the confidence in performing her/his role. On the other hand, a well-developed concept of one’s PI can lead to enhanced professional confidence and a better exercise of the profession chosen.

Worksite based prolonged static sitting postures can cause musculoskeletal pain. While the development of pain increases due to the constant growth of digitalization at work, numerous interventions to reduce prolonged sitting periods have been created. The effects of such interventions have not yet been properly examined. Thus, the "DynSit-Pain" project was initiated to investigate the influence of dynamic sitting on the pain development of pain developers in office environments.

The diagnosis of interstitial lung disease (ILD) due to its complex pathologic mechanisms and similar clinical features is quite difficult to achieve. A possible approach to track local changes in lung tissue can be radiological imaging, commonly through high resolution computed tomography (HRCT). However, due to the complex character of ILDs, results from HRCT are limited because of the occurrence of similar radiological features and the lack of defining exposed tissue caused by inflammation.