Dr Jette Lange enriches the Institute of Nursing Science at IMC Krems as a Senior Lecturer. She is characterised by looking at nursing with both a passionate and a very critical eye. Particularly interesting is her current project, which focuses on the links between climate and health and rediscovers the responsibility of nursing in times of climate change.
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Jette Lange: critical thinker in nursing and society
Nursing and climate change: a project for the future
Lange’s current project aims to support family caregivers and nursing staff in 24-hour care during heat waves. Together with her team, she is developing an innovative app that serves as an early warning system and provides tailored recommendations for action, which shall help to protect those in need of care and their caregivers during extreme heat waves.
Its access to the target group makes this project special. “Working with family caregivers and people from the 24-hour care sector is very exciting because these groups of people are very much involved. That’s why it’s not easy to access these groups, and you have to be flexible, creative and sensitive,” Lange emphasises.
The project also aims to identify the skills that nursing professionals need in order to provide informal caregivers with the necessary knowledge about climate change and health and to advise them on the appropriate care during heat waves.
Critical theory at the core of her research
Jette Lange sees herself as a critical nursing expert. This means that she uses the scientific perspective of critical theory to understand the nursing profession and identify potential for change. She questions how social processes influence the understanding and practice of nursing. Her aim is to empower nurses as powerful agents and to raise their awareness for social responsibility. “Nurses are in a key position of influence because they represent the largest professional group in the healthcare sector and are in close contact with patients and their relatives,” Lange explains. This professional policy focus runs through her work and forms the basis for her teaching at IMC Krems.
Her dissertation, which dealt with the professionalisation of nursing in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, revealed interesting paradoxes that she would now like to explore in more depth in further research projects. She is particularly fascinated by the question of how nursing is changing as a result of the introduction of digitalisation and artificial intelligence. “It’s strange that time-saving processes often have the opposite effect and that the intensification of work in nursing is tending to increase,” Lange notes. Investigating these contradictions is what drives her in her research.
A researcher with a vision
In addition to her scientific work, Jette Lange is also deputy chair of the German Association for the History of Nursing. She has played a major role in a new textbook on the history of nursing that is characterised by its accessibility for historical laymen and is intended to enrich teaching in this often neglected area. Lange sees nursing history as a key to forming identity and shaping the future of nursing. “We will not fully realise our responsibility as nurses if we do not recognise our social impact. And this becomes more visible in retrospect across the various political and social systems,” Lange says.
Jette Lange in private: an inspiring personality
Jette Lange is not only a passionate researcher, but also an inspiring personality. She describes herself as a person who likes to irritate and be irritated – because, as she says, this leads to wonder and new thought processes. She finds balance in nature, on bike rides or when casting candles. Her career has not always been predictable, but it is precisely this unpredictability that has shaped her into the versatile and open-minded researcher she is today. “In my case, as a ‘working-class child’, it was neither planned nor imaginable that I would pursue an international scientific career,” Lange summarises.
With her work at IMC Krems and her tireless commitment to nursing, Jette Lange proves that she is not only an outstanding scientist, but also a visionary who is rethinking and reshaping nursing in times of change.
About Jette Lange
Dr Jette Lange completed a training programme in geriatric care in Germany and went on to study nursing science, vocational education and biology to become a teacher. She has international teaching and research experience and obtained a doctorate from the University of Ottawa, Canada. The 39-year-old has been working at the Institute of Nursing Science at IMC Krems since March.