Karin Olson, PhD

(She, Her, Hers)

Adjunct Professor

School of Nursing

Office: Remote
Phone: 780-935-1186
Email: karin.olson@ubc.ca

Research Summary

health behaviour; symptom management; evidence based clinical practice; shared decision making; qualitative research methods

Courses & Teaching

Nursing 554

Biography

Karin Olson is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus in Kelowna, Canada, Syilx Okanagan Territory and Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Dr. Olson’s research, rooted in clinical practice and academic settings, has focused on implementing evidence-based practice, on exploring fatigue in the context of cancer, and on the developing required qualitative and mixed methods research approaches.  She teaches both statistics and qualitative research methods.  Personnel Awards from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research provided an opportunity to study fatigue in individuals with advanced cancer and four other ill and non-ill populations, and led to development of the Adaptive Capacity Index and a multidimensional fatigue model.  Dr. Olson also led a large ethnographic study comparing fatigue in individuals with advanced cancer in Thailand, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and found that while the manifestations of fatigue were the same, the meaning of the manifestations were very different. These findings suggest that if the goal is to reduce distress, interventions should be developed within the context where they will be used, rather than simply borrowed from other settings where they were successful.  Dr. Olson has now expanded her work to include ways to foster shared decision making between individuals and their health care providers that incorporate current evidence as well as patients’ preferences and values regarding symptom management.

 

 

Websites

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8872-2355

 

Degrees

BScN University of Alberta, 1976
MHSC University of Toronto 1981
PhD University of Alberta 1990

Research Interests & Projects

Dr Olson is currently completing a large ethnographic study of shared decision making between health care providers and individuals with symptoms of anxiety and depression.  Data were collected across all health zones in Alberta between 2017 and 2021.  The study involved development of a dyadic instrument intended to measure the perceptions of both health care providers and patients regarding whether shared decision making took place during a given appointment.  The final phase of the study focuses on the relationship between shared decision making and other potential predictors of health care utilization.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Please see attached CV

Selected Grants & Awards

Please see attached CV