Research Projects

The Chair’s research projects follow two principal axes. The first concerns the anticipation and preparation of health decisions for people with cognitive disorders. The second examines communication between physicians and patients.

These projects are financed by the CHUV, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and private foundations. Research is carried out by a multi-disciplinary team composed of: psychologists, a sociologist, nurses, physicians and a specialist in ethics and social work.

You can find a description of the projects below.

ADIA: Alzheimer’s disease-specific intervention of advance care planning Advance Care Planning by proxy for people who no longer have decision making capacity Resuscitation Options and Preferences Development of training in physician-patient communication about resuscitation Needs of relatives concerning the Advance Care Planning project Understanding the will to live in older people living in nursing homes The will to live in nursing home residents: impact for care Social Network Analysis of older non French-native speaker migrants Ethics of Communication & Ethics in Communication : An Exploratory Analysis of Advance Care Planning Encounters Clinical communication in the hospital with elderly patients and their relatives in the context of COVID-19

Other research projects

The Chair brings its expertise to several research projects. In particular, it supervises Masters and doctoral students and has collaborations with other departments of the CHUV on a number of projects. The following are some selected examples:

Goals of care in patients suffering from stroke (collaboration with the Palliative Care and Support Service of the CHUV and the University of Washington, Seattle)
Voluntary stopping eating and drinking at the end of life (collaboration with the University of Munich LMU, Germany)
The impact of a training in general palliative care for caregivers in EMS and CMS, by a Master of Science in Nursing student (Master of Science in Nursing, Fiorella Figari Aguilar)
The Challenge of Information on Palliative Sedation in Hospitals (Master of Medicine, Allan Cocker)
Advance care Planning by proxy in residential aged care facilities from the perspective of health professionals (Master of Medicine, Florent Rhyner)
Chronic pain and its treatment in communication networks for the elderly (SNSF project by Prof. Pascal Singy)
Faced with the question of placing an elderly parent in an institution, how to children experience guilt? (Thesis by the sociologist Anamaria Terrier)