Margareta Halek

Biography

After training as a geriatric nurse, Margareta Halek completed her studies in Nursing Science (BScN and MScN) at the Institute of Nursing Science at the Witten/Herdecke University . During her seven years of professional experience in geriatric care, Margareta Halek gained in-depth clinical expertise. Between 2001 and 2010, she was research assistant to Prof. S. Bartholomeyczik at the chair of Epidemiology and Nursing Science at the Institute of Nursing Science, Witten/Herdecke University . In addition to teaching and supervising students, she focused on research topics such as care for the elderly, requirements and needs of people after a stroke, nursing assessment instruments, care for people with dementia, challenging behaviour of people with dementia and the development of guidelines. As part of her Ph.D., which she completed in 2010, she developed a guideline (IDA) on the understanding diagnostics of challenging behaviour of people with dementia in long-term care institutions. This guideline was literature-based and empirically tested for validity and practicability. She continues this research in her working group Care Interventions, which she is heading since 2010 at the DZNE Center in Witten. Her research also includes the entire range of psychosocial interventions, the understanding diagnostics of challenging behaviours and the assessment and improvement of quality of life of those affected. Her research interest also includes integrating the care complexity and individuality of people with dementia into the research design as well as the development of appropriate outcomes and their measuring instruments. Since 2016 is MH junior professor of Nursing Science and Dementia Care at Department of Nursing Science at UW/H.

Research Interest

The working group “Care Interventions” The main question pursued by the working group Care Interventions is: "What helps people with dementia in dealing with the consequences of their disease?" The patients and their families do what they can to retain normality as far as possible, to hang onto their "old life" and to keep the quality of life at its usual level in spite of the disease. Maintaining a normal everyday life is a very complex process, which affects many areas of life, life phases and the different parties involved. The working group targets people at all stages of dementia and their families. It develops supportive interventions for all available settings that encourage, inform, educate and relieve the professional as well as the non-professional parties involved. The focus is on the whole range of supportive interventions for everyday life that are being developed and tested in terms of their effectiveness. The interventions range from informing the people involved to enabling them to undertake certain activities.