Jette Ammentorp is Professor and Research Manager at the Health Services Research Unit, Department of Regional Health Research at Lillebaelt Hospital. She has a clinical background as a former head nurse and holds a Ph.D. in health communication. In several efficacy studies, she has investigated the impact of multidisciplinary communication skills courses, methods to evaluate the outcome of the training, and methods to implement and embed this in clinical practice.
She has initiated the implementation and evaluation of a comprehensive communication program at Lillebaelt Hospital in Denmark including all health professionals and also staff with short patient contact. Participatory Action Research has been used to develop and evaluate new training modules (existential communication and shared decision-making).
Based on the research in communication skills training, shared decision making, existential communication and in interventions that provide patients with sound recordings of their consultations, her research unit is developing a new concept for communication skills training based on blended learning and patient feedback. This is part of an Interreg funded project and established in collaborating with a research group in Kiel, Germany.
She has been a project manager for several national and international projects cooperating with many international researchers, among others ‘The Oslo Communication in Healthcare Education and Research group’ (OCHER) and researchers from ‘The European Association for Communication in Healthcare’ (EACH). Since 2017, she has been affiliated as Honorary Professor at Faculty of Health at Deakin University, Australia.
She has initiated the establishment of The Danish Society for Communication in Health Care in 2016 for which she is now the chairman of the Board.
