Inger Ekman's research focuses on communication and symptoms in patients with long term illness, and evaluation of person-centred care interventions.
1. The communication part concerns patients' view upon their condition and treatment. Her studies in relation to this are descriptive and interventional studies on adherence, concordance and evaluation of how patients and health professionals´ perceive and manage prescribed treatment.
2. The studies on symptoms are explorative (what words do patients use to describe worsening in their chronic condition?), predictive (patients' self-reported symptoms predict worsening) and interventional (e.g. effects of deep and slow breathing on dyspnea in chronic heart failure).
3. The two research lines described above have fused into a broader research program, Person-centred care, which also involves organizational research.