Tiny Jaarsma is employed part time as a professor at Nursing Science since 2018, placed in the Julius Center, University Medical Center Utrecht with a position as a professor in Chronic Care/ Cardiovascular Nursing Care. She is also full professor in Nursing at Linköping University in Sweden, were she lives with her family.

Tiny Jaarsma received her bachelor education in nursing HBO-V in Groningen, the Netherlands, received her master degree in Health Sciences from the University of Maastricht in 1992, as part of a Dr Dekker fellowship of the Netherlands Heart Foundation. She studied 6 months at the UCLA in 1993 and completed her doctoral degree in 1999 at the University of Maastricht.

Her working life, she spend mostly in research and nursing. After her graduation she worked as a nurse in the University Medical Center in Groningen in the departments of internal medicine and cardiology. After her master degree, she worked as an assistant professor at the University of Maastricht. After her doctoral degree she worked as a post-doc researcher at the Netherlands Heart Foundation (from 1988-2000), and as a researcher and associate professor in the University Medical Center Groningen from 2000-2010. In 2010 she immigrated to Sweden to work at Linköping University as a full professor in Nursing. Together with professors Strömberg and Märtensson she is heading a research group (CESAR) with 25 national and international researchers in the area of cardiac care in Sweden. Her research has been published in over 400 publications ranging from short practical communications, book chapters to scientific publications in peer reviewed journals.

The last 15 years, Tiny Jaarsma has obtained more than 22 international competitive research grants from national (Netherlands and Sweden) and European funding (FP7 funding), with the largest grant held for the COACH study 3,3 mil Euro). 

Tiny her main scientific achievement is the integration of current scientific knowledge in a middle range theory: ‘the middle range theory of self-care in chronic illness’ developed with professors Anna Strömberg (LiU and Barbara Riegel (University of Pennsylvania). Related to this main achievement is the development of the European Heart Failure Self-care Behavior Scale that is currently translated in 21 languages and used in international research trials.