Hanna Marie Ihlebæk

• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie; Ihlebæk, Camilla; Knez, Rajna; Busso, Lilliana Andrea Del; Prøitz, Lin & Femdal, Ingrid [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2026). What to do with school refusal? A scoping review of digital and non-digital interventions. Frontiers in Education. 11. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1862436. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Introduction: School refusal poses significant challenges to children's education and wellbeing. Despite increased public, political and scholarly attention, there remains limited systematic knowledge about available interventions, in particular digital interventions. This scoping review therefore aims to identify and describe the range and nature of treatment interventions for school refusal, with a specific focus on digital approaches. Methods: A scoping review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Eligible studies were empirical, peer-reviewed articles published in 1993 or later that examined interventions for school refusal among children and adolescents. Screening and data extraction were completed independently in pairs. The data was analyzed descriptively, utilizing an adapted TIDieR framework applied to intervention reporting. Results: Thirty-one studies published between 1998 and 2025 met the inclusion criteria. Research activity increased notably from 2018 onward and was dominated by quantitative designs conducted primarily in Western, high-income contexts. Most interventions were cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)-based, delivered individually, in groups, or as multimodal programs, sometimes combined with pharmacological treatment. CBT interventions generally reported improved school attendance, although effect sizes and durability varied. Only six studies (19%) incorporated digital components, including remote therapeutic delivery, virtual reality exposure, serious games, and online parent coaching. These interventions were feasible and acceptable but showed limited evidence of direct effects on school attendance. Outcome measures were heterogeneous, though school attendance and anxiety symptoms were most consistently reported. Conclusion: The evidence-base on interventions for school refusal is growing but remains fragmented, with an underrepresentation of digital approaches. Existing digital interventions predominantly target the individual or family rather than school environments or the interaction between the individual, their family and the school environment. Future research should explore how digital tools can support integrated and systemic school-refusal approaches that address individual, family and school-related factors over time.

• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2024). Rom, roller og restriksjoner: Forskningsetiske problemstillinger i etnografisk profesjonsforskning. In Mangset, Marte; Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie; Nordberg, Tanja Haraldsdottir & Leseth, Anne Birgitte (Ed.), Tett på profesjon, arbeid og politikk: Kvalitative metodeutfordringer og verktøy for å løse dem. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISSN 9788202795009. p. 187–204. doi: 10.23865/noasp.210.ch10. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract: This chapter deals with ethical issues in ethnographic research, a methodological approach in which the researcher aims to build emphatic relationships with the people studied to obtain an insider point of view on ongoing activities. Based on a situation that arose during fieldwork among nurses in a Norwegianhospital ward, the chapter reflects on methodological choices and ethical dilemmas that ethnographic research entails related to 1) how and when we researchers should enter the different rooms that comprise the field in our studies; 2) the roles we claim and are ascribed while in the field, and 3), considerations of how, when, and why we decide to leave. A main contribution of the chapter is to show and discuss how an ethical awareness can be enacted in meeting the unforeseen realities ‘on the spot’ and not only by adhering to bureaucratic regulations ‘from the desktop’. Furthermore, the chapter claims that to establish such an awareness we need broader and more open discussions about actual ethical dilemmas in ethnographic research, in order to promote ethical accountability as a discretionary, and hence relational, ongoing, and collective way of reasoning among qualitative researchers. Keywords: research ethics, study of professions, participant observation, discretion

• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2023). The Fast, the Feeble, and the Furious: Digital Transformation of Temporality in Clinical Care. In Fugletveit, Ragnhild & Sørhaug, Christian (Ed.), Lost in Digital Translations: Studies of Digital Resistance and Accommodation to the Welfare State in Practice. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISSN 9788202781033. p. 117–136. doi: 10.23865/noasp.196.ch5. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this anthology a group of researchers investigate how digitalisation influences the most ambitious welfare state in the world: Norway. Given Norway’s extensive welfare system, the process of digitalisation has had a profound impact. Digital technologies are used to enhance cooperation and coordination between health trusts and municipalities, standardizing communication between frontline workers and citizens, and even altering the architectural design of public buildings, all of which influences the quality of welfare services. At the same time, patient security is endangered, vulnerable groups experience even more exclusion from society, and for others, the quality of welfare deteriorates.

• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2021). Time to care - An ethnographic study of how temporal structuring affects caring relationships in clinical nursing. Social Science and Medicine. ISSN 0277-9536. 287. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114349. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores how temporal structuring of clinical activities affects nurses’ establishment of caring relationships with patients, based on an ethnographic study in a Norwegian cancer ward in January–June 2017. By drawing on practice-based perspectives on time and care, the article shows how ‘medical time’, ‘patient time’ and ‘hospital time’ represent three distinct but interconnected clinical rhythms affecting caring relationships. In this way, the article provides insights into how caring relationships are established in nurses’ intermediate role as temporal agents, accommodation various temporal structures associated with the biomedical and person-centred care models. Second, it contributes insights into how caring practices are temporally structured and reproduced in a hospital context. Finally, the article describes factors that influence different ways of structuring time, emphasising the need for temporal reflexivity and flexibility in meeting patients’ care needs, and the role time to care plays in facilitating this.

• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2020). Lost in translation - Silent reporting and electronic patient records in nursing handovers: An ethnographic study. International Journal of Nursing Studies. ISSN 0020-7489. 109. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2020.103636. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Background: Electronic patient records are increasingly being implemented in hospitals around the world to promote a process of sharing information that is reliable, more efficient and will promote patient safety. Evidence suggests that in practice, adaptations are being made to how such technologies are being used in practice. Few studies have explicitly aimed to explore how electronic patient records influence on nurses’ communication of patient information in clinical practice. Objective: To enhance understanding of the impact of electronic patient records on nurses’ cognitive work, by exploring how nurses engage with the electronic patient record during handover and the representation of patient information. Methods: Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in a Norwegian hospital cancer ward where computer-mediated handover referred to as ’silent reporting’ had been implemented. The fieldwork included five months of participant observation and nine semi-structured interviews with registered nurses. Participating nurses were selected to ensure representation by clinical experience. The analysis of field notes and transcripts was partly performed in NVivo 11, following thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006). Findings: Four themes emerged: 1) nurses’ complex and dynamic workflow necessitated talk in handovers, 2) oral communication allowed nurses to share sensitive information on psychosocial issues, and 3) to solve uncertainties considered unsuited for the record, and 4) talk facilitated professional and moral support in clinical decisions-making, as collective achievements. Talk was thereby found to be essential to nurses’ cognitive work and professional knowledge, allowing for the translation and interplay between the embodied, informal knowledge of the individual nurse, and formal knowledge inscribed in record notes. Conclusions: Silent reporting has implications for nurses’ cognitive work and professional knowledge. With the sole reliance on the electronic patient record as handover tools, it is not only information essential to nurses’ evolving, dynamic, and contextualised understanding of the patient’s situation that is lost in translation, but also the visibility and legitimacy of nursing knowledge. Nurses’ continued practices of talk in handovers can be seen as efforts to counteract these effects in ways that also increased the relevance and usefulness of the electronic patient record as a mediator of knowledge.

• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2018). Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Making Sense of Senses in Expert Nursing. Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. ISSN 0091-2131. 46(4), p. 477–497. doi: 10.1111/etho.12220. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article, I draw on material from an ethnographic and phenomenological study of knowledge and professionalism among registered nurses working in a cancer unit at a Norwegian hospital. During the study, the use of the senses stood out as an important skill in nurses’ work with patients. The question to be investigated in this article is how the nurses acquire and use sensory knowledge in their clinical work. Building on a notion of knowledge as situated, embodied, and sensory, and learning as embedded in doing, this article contributes to and expands on the study of sensory knowledge in two respects. First, it foregrounds the processes and practices in which sensory knowledge is actually formed and used at a microlevel. Second, it highlights how an ethnographic and phenomenological exploration of the acquisition and use of sensory knowledge can contribute new insights into how expertise is cultivated in everyday clinical practice.

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• Mangset, Marte; Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie; Nordberg, Tanja Haraldsdottir & Leseth, Anne Birgitte (2024). Tett på profesjon, arbeid og politikk. Kvalitative metodeutfordringer og verktøy for å løse dem. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISBN 9788202795009. doi: 10.23865/noasp.210. Full text in Research Archive
• Mangset, Marte; Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie; Nordberg, Tanja Haraldsdottir & Leseth, Anne Birgitte (2024). Tett på profesjon, arbeid og politikk: Kvalitative metodeutfordringer og verktøy for å løse dem. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISBN 9788202795009. 255 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Kirchhoff, Jörg W.; Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie & Bjørkquist, Catharina (2026). Perspectives on Quality in Norwegian Community Care – An Ethnographic Study. Full text in Research Archive
• Sørhaug, Christian & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2026). PROFRES Spring PhD Symposium 2026 | Universitetet i Stavanger. doi: https:/www.uis.no/nb/node/12634. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Østfold University College, campus Fredrikstad 16 - 18 March 2026

• Gjellebæk, Camilla; Løken, Therese Dwyer & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2025). Time, Money and Good Quality Care. doi: https:/www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/194329/WORK2025%20Work%20in%20the%20Era%20of%20Unruly%20AI%20-%20Abstract%20book.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2025). Rom, roller og restriksjoner - Forskningsetiske problemstillinger i etnografisk profesjonsforskning. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2024). Work in Progress: Qualitative. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie; Kirchhoff, Jörg W. & Bjørkquist, Catharina (2024). Rhythms and Rooms – an ethnographic study of flow in Norwegian home nursing care. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie & Gjellebæk, Camilla (2024). Digital knowledge management as a contribution to collaboration and innovation in the public sector. Full text in Research Archive
• Bjørkquist, Catharina; Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie & Kirchhoff, Jörg W. (2024). Implementing Digital Interaction Boards in Home Care: A Study of Leaders' and Quality Advisors' Actions and Inactions. Full text in Research Archive
• Løken, Therese Dwyer & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2024). Tverrfaglig samarbeid som kollektiv kunnskap og ekspertise. Full text in Research Archive
• Kirchhoff, Jörg W.; Bjørkquist, Catharina & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2024). Ulike perspektiver på kvalitet i helsetjenesten. Full text in Research Archive
• Kirchhoff, Jörg W.; Bjørkquist, Catharina & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2023). Digitalisering av helsetjenesten - Presentasjon av resultater fra et samarbeidsprosjekt. Full text in Research Archive
• Kirchhoff, Jörg W.; Bjørkquist, Catharina & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2023). Digitale tavler i kommunehelsetjenesten. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2023). On Rhythms & Rooms: The Sociomaterial Staging of Time in a Digital Context. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2023). Forskerpresentasjon - Å forske i eget felt. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie; Grøndahl, Vigdis Abrahamsen & Busso, Lilliana Andrea Del (2022). Kjønn(sforskning) er for alle! Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2021). Time to Care - an ethnographic study. Full text in Research Archive
• Gjellebæk, Camilla & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2020). Hvorfor det er viktig med flere kvinner i forskning! Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie & Gjellebæk, Camilla (2020). Digitalisation and professional work in healthcare, technology, knowledge and learning. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2019). Sykepleieres evne til å lukte er nyttig, men ikke eneste vei til diagnose. Sykepleien Forskning. ISSN 1890-2936. Full text in Research Archive
• Hernæs, Nina & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2019). Urinveisinfeksjon er noe sykepleiere kan lukte. [Journal]. Sykepleien.no. Full text in Research Archive
• Bergstrøm, Ida Irene & Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2019). Sykepleiere kan lukte urinveisinfeksjon. [Journal]. Forskning.no. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2018). We are supposed to be doing silent reporting but... Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie (2017). Senses and Sense-making: an Ethnographic Study of Embodied Knowledge in Nursing. Full text in Research Archive
• Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie; Leseth, Anne & Kirchhoff, Jörg (2022). The knowing body and a body of knowledge: an ethnographic study of professional knowledge in use in clinical nursing. OsloMet - storbyuniversitetet. ISSN 9788283643947. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis is an ethnographic study of nursing knowledge from the perspective of its use, exploring how professional knowledge evolves in work by taking clinical cancer nursing as its case. Cancer nursing requires a complex interplay between biomedical, clinical and patient knowledge in caring for patients’ acute and prolonged physical and mental problems. It thus provides a case that reveals the heterogeneous body of theoretical knowledge and complex practical skills that comprise clinical nursing. The nature and status of these different forms of knowledge and their usefulness for clinical practice in modern healthcare contexts have been discussed in great detail in the nursing literature, more recently related to questions of academisation and evidence-based practice. These discussions reflect the essential role ascribed to knowledge in defining and exploring what professions are, and what they do, in the sociology of professions and the literature on expertise. Despite this interest in understanding what knowledge is, and what role different forms of knowledge play in professional practice, few studies have aimed to envision and explore how different types of knowledge and modes of knowing are interconnected in professional decision-making at a micro-level, and how knowledge thus develops through use. These questions are explored in this thesis by analysing data from five months of fieldwork followed by formal interviews with registered nurses in a cancer ward in a Norwegian hospital. Observations revealed how nurses’ professional knowledge and clinical expertise emerged in clinical decision-making through practices of sensing, sharing and caring, as they aimed to evaluate, define and meet cancer patients’ overall care needs. These practices were further explored and analysed by combining perspectives from the sociology of professions and knowledge in policy with sociological and anthropological notions on embodiment, translation and temporality. On this basis the thesis addresses the question of how knowledge is acquired, shared and structured in nurses’ clinical practice and how it is moulded in its circulation through enactments in an organisational context. Based on the three empirical articles, the thesis demonstrates, firstly, how nursing knowledge develops through the building of sensory knowledge in nurses’ continuous, embodied and intersubjective interaction with individual patients and a specific patient group. Secondly, it illustrates how the embodied knowledge of individual nurses is transformed through acts of translation as knowledge is shared, and hence moves in interaction. Thus, nursing knowledge emerges as a third space in the nurses’ interpretative and creative effort to fill the gap between knowledge as embodied and inscribed and the languages and lifeworlds of patients, practitioners and managers. Finally, it displays how nurses’ professional knowledge is produced and reproduced through temporal structuring of caring practices in clinical work, potentially emphasising particular modes of accomplishing care and forms of knowing at the expense of others. In sum, the thesis thus sheds light on how nurses’ heterogeneous body of theoretical knowledge and practical skills is put to use and made useful in a particular organisational context. In this way, the study identifies topics for reflection by clinical practitioners, managers and policy-makers in the field of knowledge management in contemporary healthcare contexts and other professional settings. Beyond providing an in-depth ethnography on aspects of clinical work and knowledge that are little studied in the existing nursing literature and often rendered invisible in a modern hospital context, the thesis contributes to the literature on professions more generally. It does so by demonstrating how acts of diagnosis and treatment are accomplished in the continuous mobilisation and synthesis of theoretical and practical forms of knowledge through inference as an embodied, interactional and situated achievement. The thesis thereby nuances a notion on professional knowledge as a given, illuminating its potential heterogeneous nature, the complex ways in which various forms of knowledge are connected in the solving of particular tasks, and how it circulates and evolves in enactments at the workplace. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the fruitfulness of broadening out theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of professional knowledge in future research. It is to be hoped that the thesis can inspire further exploration and new revelations of the knowing body and the body of knowledge in professional practice.

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