Rikke Aarhus

Areas of work

Rikke Aarhus has worked within the health and eldercare field for nearly 20 years, with a particular focus on how encounters between patients/citizens, informal caregivers, and professionals both shape and are shaped by structures, expectations, and agency.

Rikke has solid knowledge of interactions between patients/citizens, informal caregivers, and professionals in care and treatment situations, as well as between professionals, including in interdisciplinary collaboration. She also has extensive insight into the everyday lives of citizens/patients and informal caregivers in relation to their own and others’ ageing, illness, and health.

She has conducted numerous studies in patients’/citizens’ homes, in general practice clinics, in municipalities, and in hospitals, focusing, among other things, on the role of informal caregivers, patients’/citizens’ management of ageing, illness, and health, municipal eldercare and its organization, medical admissions, outpatient pathways, cross-sectoral patient pathways, and standardized care pathways.

Over the years, Rikke has primarily worked with illness, health, and later life, and with the interaction between people and structures within the somatic healthcare sector and the eldercare sector. In recent years, she has also focused on the same themes within the psychiatric field.

Methods

Rikke Aarhus has extensive experience in conducting qualitative studies based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews. She has used methods such as participant observation, shadowing, semi-structured individual interviews, and group interviews. Rikke has substantial experience in following patients throughout their care pathways and in conducting observations in citizens’ homes, for example to shed light on care encounters and everyday life with ageing or illness. She conducts interviews both as in-person visits, for example in a citizen’s/informal caregiver’s home, at workplaces, and online.

Rikke carries out both exploratory and more focused qualitative studies in private homes as well as within and across sectors of the healthcare system. She also has experience with process facilitation and with user involvement in development and evaluation studies.

Background

Rikke Aarhus holds a degree in anthropology from Aarhus University, with a focus on medical anthropology. She also holds a PhD in Health Sciences from Aarhus University, where her research focused on the diagnostic phase of cancer patient pathways and the interaction between, on the one hand, time management and standardization and, on the other hand, working conditions, agency, and lived experiences.

Rikke has more than 10 years of experience working in the hospital sector, where she was engaged in development, evaluation, and research activities, including in connection with the design of accelerated patient pathways and improved admission processes. At VIVE, Rikke works on research commission projects, analytical  and research projects within the health and eldercare fields, primarily focusing on patients/citizens and informal caregivers, or combining perspectives from patients/citizens, informal caregivers, professionals, and organizations.