Prof. Michal Itzhaki promoted to Associate Professor

Prof. Michal Itzhaki is a faculty member at the Department of Nursing, School of Health Professions. She is the first registered nurse in Israel to have completed a direct Ph.D. track, which she obtained at the Department of Nursing Department at Tel Aviv University. She completed her post-doctoral training at the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University. Her research focuses on the emotion management of patients and caregivers in complex, challenging, and demanding health and illness situations. She explores the gaps between experienced versus expected emotions in diverse stressful care situations: emergencies and disasters, violence in the health care system, life-threatening situations, multicultural dilemmas, and mental, terminal, and chronic illnesses (such as fibromyalgia). Examining emotion management includes strengthening the personal and team-group resilience of patients, their families, and the healthcare staff.

Her recent research examined the emotional work and resilience of healthcare personnel who treat pediatric patients from the Palestinian Authority in Israel in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the healthcare ethos. In this study, she developed a research tool to test emotion management and combined quantitative and qualitative research methods. The research findings showed that language and cultural capability are significant in providing healthcare personnel with methods to care for ethnically diverse patients sensitively and respectfully in varying settings.