DIPEx Switzerland
DIPEx Switzerland is a group of researchers from the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (University of Zurich) and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences – School of Health Professions (ZHAW). We conduct narrative interview studies of people’s experiences of health issues and provide resources for information and support that are freely available for patients, family members, clinicians in training as well as teachers and researchers. The project aims at harnessing the power of patient voices to stimulate improvement. A systematic collection of evidence offers the chance to remedy lack of patient representation and to include low threshold exposure to patient experience into teaching materials that complement bedside teaching. We provide opportunities for interprofessional and interdisciplinary collaboration with other health professionals and aim at stimulate and establish the dialogue between health and the arts and design within the Medical Humanities.
Our team
Our researchers are experienced in qualitative research methods and receive accredited training in the DIPEx method. Researchers are supported by an experienced ‘buddy’ and a multidisciplinary Expert Advisory Panel. Primary and support researchers meet regularly during data analysis to ensure data validity and methodological rigour.
Nikola Biller-Andorno
Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Nikola Biller-Andorno directs the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine as well as the Center for Medical Humanities, University of Zurich, Switzerland. She co-leads the PhD program “Biomedical Ethics and Law” and serves as Vice-President of the Clinical Ethics Committee of the University Hospital Zurich. In 2016, she was elected as Fellow of the Collegium Helveticum, an Institute of Advanced Study sponsored by the University of Zurich, the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and the Zurich University of the Arts.
Andrea Glässel
Andrea Glässel has been a member of the DIPEx Swiss (Database of Individual Patient Experiences) team at the Institute for Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (IBME) since 2017. She coordinates the module on experiencing multiple sclerosis (MS) from the point of view of patients. In addition to her research work at IBME, Andrea is a professor at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Winterthur, where she teaches students from various healthcare professions. She has been a trained physiotherapist since 1991 and worked for ten years in inpatient and outpatient neurorehabilitation. Since her studies in health sciences, she has been researching a holistic concept of biopsychosocial health, functioning and disability of the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2012, she wrote her doctoral thesis on: “Functioning and Disability after stroke: The perspective of the patient and medical professionals”.
Beatrix Göcking
Beatrix Göcking is a doctoral candidate in the field of biomedical ethics. Since her studies in Religious Studies and Gender Studies, she has been working at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine. Through her initial training as an intensive care nurse and her many years of work in various intensive care units in Germany and Switzerland, she is very familiar with the care of critically ill individuals. In the DIPEx module on brain injury, she aims to contribute empirically to the healthcare of neurocritical ill patients, considering ethical aspects.
Yvonne Ilg
Yvonne Ilg studied German language and literature, history and Popular Culture Studies at the universities of Zurich and Berlin and worked as a doctoral researcher on the interdisciplinary project “’Schizophrenia’: Reception, semantic shift, and criticism of a concept in the 20th century“. In her PhD thesis, she analysed the career of the nowadays highly contested term "schizophrenia" within everyday German language from 1908 until 2009. Since 2019 she works as a postdoctoral researcher (Seminar-Oberassistentin) in linguistics at the Department of German Studies at the University of Zurich. She has co-founded the DFG Network >Linguistik und Medizin< and the UZH initiative Language&Medicine both of which she is co-coordinating. Together with Anke Maatz and Henrike Wiemer, she is currently working on the project ‘Drüber reden! Aber wie?’ and on this Mental Health module.
Susanne Jöbges
Dr. med. Susanne Jöbges works as a postdoctoral researcher in bioethics. She holds a degree in anaesthesiology and intensive care medicine and a masters degree in medical ethic. She’s been working as a consultant for anaesthesiology in the department for anaesthesioloy and intensive care (head of the department Prof. Dr. med. C. Spies) at the charité Berlin. On an intensive care unit she was leading senior assistant. After she joined the DIPEx team in May 2019 and coordinates the module about experiences with self-determination and intensive care.
Anke Maatz
Anke Maatz trained in medicine and philosophy at the universities of Munich, Heidelberg, Jena (Germany) and Durham (U.K.) qualifying with an MA dissertation on phenomenological psychopathology and a medical doctorate in experimental attachment theory. After a project with medical anthropologists studying clinicians’ experiences and conceptions of functional illness in Durham, she was a postdoctoral researcher on the interdisciplinary project “’Schizophrenia’ - reception, semantic shift and criticism of a concept” in Zurich from 2013 to 2016. From 2016 to 2019, she was a research fellow at the UZH funded by Filling-the-Gap. She is the co-founder and co-coordinator of the interfaculty initiative Language&Medicine. Since 2013, she has also been training as a psychiatric resident at the University Hospital of Psychiatry, where, since 2020, she leads the young investigator group ‘Humanities in Mental Health’. Together with Yvonne Ilg and Henrike Wiemer, she co-leads the research project ‘Drüber reden! Aber wie?’ which strongly contributes to the development of this website.
Corine Mouton-Dorey
Corine Mouton-Dorey focuses her research on patient agency and accountability. Her PhD work on biomedical ethics identified the importance of the patients’voices in medical practice for better care, trust and justice in health. She has a practical experience with patients both as a cardiologist and as a qualitative researcher. She supports the french-speaking part of the DIPEx project and work on the possibilities to enrich DIPEx process and outcomes with digital technology.
Andrea Radvanszky
Andrea Radvanszky is sociologist and a qualitative researcher. She is responsible for the DIPEx Swiss Module Dementia. In her PhD « the social diagnosis of dementia » which she is currently finalizing at the University of Leipzig she focuses on patient-caregiver relationship and the impact of rule breaking behavior on identity and illness constructions. Her research addresses the empirically funded dementia care ethics which reference point is not the self-conscious and free individual but the social relationship.
Bettina Schwind
Bettina Schwind joined the DIPEx Switzerland team at the Institute for Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (IBME) in 2019 and is implementing the module “chronic pain”. The module explores the question of how people with chronic pain experience their everyday life and the Swiss health and social system. She also coordinates the MAS in Insurance Medicine at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and teaches on topics such as qualitative social research and gender and health. In her dissertation, which she completed in 2016, she researched different gynaecological care settings in Switzerland using a medical sociological approach with a gender perspective. Since then, she has specifically expanded her research skills to include participatory research approaches as well as migration and diversity in health care, also in various applied research and evaluation projects.
Giovanni Spitale
Giovanni Spitale is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich. He studied Philosophy and Philosophical Sciences in Italy, where he also worked as a teacher, educator and communication expert. He has collaborated and collaborates with numerous associations related to the donation of blood, organs and bone marrow, concrete practices of humanity to which he has dedicated much of his studies and on which he has written two books: “Il Dono nelle Donazioni” (2015) and “Hestia” (2017). He is a member of DIPEx.ch since the end of 2017, contributing as a research data manager and coordinator of the module on the experiences of young adults with hemato-oncological diseases.
Mirriam Tyebally-Fang
Mirriam Tyebally Fang is a PhD candidate, pursuing a degree in Bioethics at the University of Zurich. She is medical doctor by training, and has worked in the public hospital system in Singapore prior to her PhD. She has also been involved in teaching and developing the anatomy curriculum in medical school. Mirriam has been a member of DIPEx.ch since its inception, and leads a research module on pregnancy experiences in Switzerland.
Sebastian Wäscher
Sebastian Wäscher is a post-doctoral researcher in bioethics. After graduating in communication science, philosophy, and sociology at the University of Münster, Germany, he became a research assistant at the Institute for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine in Bochum, Germany. Since 2015 he is a member of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine in Zürich and since 2019, he is a member of the DIPEx group. Sebastian has established a proven expertise in qualitative research methods over the past years. He conducted research in various field of biomedical ethics like, personalized medicine, end-of-life decision making, methodological questions of empirical-ethics, evaluation of clinical ethics support service, scientific responsibility, pregnancy and prenatal testing, and research integrity. Since 2021, he is the coordinator of the DIPEx module on rare diseases.
Henrike Wiemer
Henrike Wiemer had her first psychiatric inpatient treatment in Germany in 1998, at the age of 14. Multiple institutionalized treatments and psychiatric assessments followed until Henrike was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 18. Since then she has had several more psychotic episodes and inpatient stays, but she has also known times at which she has lived with hardly any symptoms at all. In these intervals, Henrike finished high-school (German Abitur), moved to Switzerland and obtained a Bachelor`s degree in German Linguistics and Psychology from the University of Zürich in 2016. To earn a living, Henrike has been working as a self-employed German teacher since 2017. Henrike has always been interested in sharing her experience of schizophrenia and in exploiting her experience to contribute to advanced schizophrenia research. Since 2018 she has been involved with the project ‘Drüber reden! Aber wie?’. Within this project, she has shared her experiences with mental illness in a narrative interview and started to engage in the question how psychotic experiences can be put into words. She is also interested in other people`s experiences with talking about mental health issues. Currently she is working on this Mental Health module together with Yvonne Ilg and Anke Maatz.
Kristina Würth
Kristina Würth is a social anthropologist and medical ethicist. She joined the DIPEx team in October 2020. After studying social anthropology in Basel, she completed her PhD in medical ethics. In her PhD thesis, she used an ethnographic approach to explore perspectives on shared communication and interaction between patients of Turkish and Albanian origin and healthcare providers. After her PhD, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Clinical Ethics at the University Hospital Basel (USB), mainly conducting research in the field of ethics consultations with patients of diverse origin. Since 2021 she has been working at CHUV, in the clinical ethics unit.
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