Prof. Ayişe Karadağ received her PhD degree in 1999 from Hacettepe University Health Sciences Institute in the field of Fundamentals of Nursing. She promoted to Assoc. Prof. in 2006, earned her professor title in 2011, and joined Koç University in 2015. Prof. Karadağ has made significant contributions to pre- and post-graduate nursing education, especially to specialty in nursing. In this context, after completing the Wound Ostomy Continence Nursing (WOCN) Certified Training Program at R. B. Turnbull Jr., School of WOCN, Cleveland Clinic, she took part in the establishment of Turkey’s first stoma therapy unit at Gazi University Hospital (2000). She initiated the Stoma and Wound Care Nursing (SWCN) Certified Training Program with the Ministry of Health (2001). This program is carried out at Koç University Semahat Arsel Nursing Education, Practice and Research Center under the responsibility of Prof. Karadağ since 2018.

Prof. Karadağ pioneered and chaired the Wound, Ostomy and Incontinence Nurses Society, of which she is still a member of the Board of Directors in 2008. In this process, she raised awareness with her work on the importance of SWCN, its professional competencies, standards and ethical responsibilities. She worked actively in committees and commissions such as Nursing Regulation, Professional Competencies in Nursing, Professional Specialization, SWCN Job Descriptions and SWCN Certified Education Standards Scientific Committee in the Ministry of Health. In 2018, she was elected as the chair of the Wound Management and Tissue Repair Association, an interdisciplinary association in Turkey, of which she has been a member of the Board of Directors since 2008. She was the Turkey Representative of the World Council of Enterostomal Therapists between 2001 and 2018.

Having many national and international awards for her academic work, Prof. Karadağ also received the “Best Research from a Developing Country” award for her research in the field of Chronic Wound Management by the Journal of Wound Care (JWC) in 2015. In 2020, she received the “Silver Medal” for her contributions to the education of chronic wound management in “World Wound Olympics” organized by the World Union Wound Healing Societies (WUWHS) and JWC.