24.11.2022—25.11.2022

The Hospital Inside Out

Conférence, Roma

INNOVATION series
24.11.2022 H14:00-19:15
25.11.2022 H10:15-16:40
Entrance: Via Liguria 20

Dates
24.11.2022
25.11.2022
Location
Roma
Category
Conférence
Information

INNOVATION series
24.11.2022 H14:00-19:15
25.11.2022 H10:15-16:40
Entrance: Via Liguria 20

The two-day conference will be held in English and it can also be followed online.

REGISTER IN PRESENCE
Register here to attend in Rome on Thursday 24.11.2022.
Register here to attend in Rome on Friday 25.11.2022.

REGISTER ON ZOOM
Register here to follow online on 24.11.2022.
Register here to follow online on 25.11.2022.

Istituto Svizzero
Via Liguria 20, Rome
Free entry

The Hospital Inside Out: historical legacies and social innovation

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the hospital a topic of daily newspapers— and medical expertise into the stuff of popular talk shows. Against the background of the omnipresence of the hospital in the media in the past two years, this international conference seeks to revisit and rethink the ‘hospital’ as a place that is at the same time universal and locally specific: a complex where science becomes embedded in societal and political questions, and where technology meets ethical demands.

Current trends in Switzerland see an increasing centralization of the hospital as a mega-institution with centers of excellence, leading to the closure or transformation of small regional hospitals. By contrast, in Italy the persistence and adaptation of old hospital structures is more prevalent. In both cases hospitals remain embedded in local environments, be they urban or rural, and they are shaped by local political and financial contexts. Inside the hospital, too, the situation of staff and patients mirrors broader societal questions, power relations and demands of specific societies and cultures. Ultimately, the pandemic has reminded us that hospitals and their infrastructures need to remain extremely flexible and adjust to sometimes sudden developments in public health and medical knowledge. 

With this conference, Istituto Svizzero aims to present and connect ongoing research on the hospital from different disciplinary angles. By bringing into dialogue historical and contemporary perspectives, the conference also seeks to contribute to a historically informed understanding of the challenges hospitals face today and in the future.

The conference is part of Istituto Svizzero’s series INNOVATION, which looks at innovations in research, exploring their potentials and challenges from a technological and social perspective.

Download the handout and full biographies here.

Organizers: Maria Böhmer (Istituto Svizzero), Maria Conforti (La Sapienza University of Rome), Adam Jasper (ETH/gta Zurich), Mariama Kaba (CHUV), Manuel Kaiser (University of Bern).

The conference is organized in collaboration with:
La Sapienza University of Rome, History of Medicine and Bioethics
CHUV-University of Lausanne, Institute of Humanities in Medicine
University of Berne, Institute for the history of medicine
ETH Zurich, Institute for the history and theory of architecture (gta)

Programme:

Thursday 24.11.2022

H14:00-14:15 – Welcome and introduction
Maria Böhmer, Istituto Svizzero; Maria Conforti, La Sapienza University of Rome

Panel 1: Care work in the hospital
Moderation: Lisa Haushofer, University of Zurich

The pandemic has raised sudden awareness for the importance of care work, and the working conditions of nursing staff in hospitals – one of the pictures remaining in collective memory is people applauding from their balconies for the care work done to keep the hospitals functioning during the epidemic emergency. But what do we know about the conditions and challenges of care work in the hospital? What obstacles do care professionals confront in their daily work and in special care contexts such as psychiatric care, palliative care, long-term-care or anesthesia? And what role do these questions play in today’s medical education? This panel features new research into these and other questions surrounding care (and) work in the hospital.

H14:15-14:35 – Magaly Tornay, University of Bern, Dreaming Nurses. Care and psychoanalysis in a psychiatric clinic

H14:35-14:55 – Eva Yampolsky, University of Geneva & CHUV Lausanne, Personal and cultural resources of nurses in palliative care

H14:55-15:15 – Chiara Moretti, University of Bologna, It is not me who lives where you work, but it’s you working where I temporarily live. Care work in hospital settings during the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy

H15:15-15:45 – Discussion

H15:45-16:15 – Keynote: Beatrice Schaad, Institute of Humanities in Medicine FBM-CHUV, University of Lausanne, Listening to patient’s complaints to improve medicine

H16:15-16:30 – Q&A

16:30-17:00 – Coffee break

Panel 2: Hospital and (pandemic) emergency
Moderation: Maria Conforti, La Sapienza University of Rome

During the pandemic, hospitals and their capacity of receiving patients in intensive-care-units have been in the daily news. Medical expert knowledge has been dealt with in popular debates to an unseen extent, and medical historians have been frequent guests in talk shows. This panel presents examples of (historical) research that has helped to inform our understanding of the Covid-19-pandemic, its impact on our societies and hospitals.

H17:00-17:20 – Julia Rehsmann, Bern University of Applied Sciences; Manuel Kaiser, University of Berne, Project Pandemic Objects

H17:20-17:40 – Séveric Yersin, University of Basel/Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Paris (EHESS), Lazarets for the masses. How medical isolation adapted to the standard of living of the middle-class (1870-1890)

H17:40-18:00 – Yvan Prkachin, University of Zurich, House of cARDS: The Ventilator and the Emergence of Intensive Care Medicine

H18:00-18:30 – Discussion

H18:30-19:00 – Keynote: Lavinia Bifulco, University of Milan, Hospitals and territorial health services in Italy: what the Covid-19 emergency tells us

H19:00-19:15 – Q&A


Friday 25.11.2022

Panel 3: Hospital policies and financing
Moderation: Lisa Haushofer, University of Zurich

Current trends in Switzerland see an increasing centralization of the hospital as a mega-institution with centers of excellence, leading to the closure or transformation of small regional hospitals. By contrast, in Italy the persistence and adaptation of old hospital structures is more prevalent. In both cases hospitals remain embedded in local environments, be they urban or rural, and they are shaped by local political and financial contexts. What are the effects of the new public management on the hospital organization? How can hospitals deal with austerity demands and the exigence of their healing mission, in Europe and beyond? 

H10:15-10:35 – Mariama Kaba, Institute of Humanities in Medicine FBM-CHUV, University of Lausanne, ‘From the small ones to the big one’: human, social and medical issues of the centralization of hospitals and in hospitals

H10:35-10:55 – Janina Kehr, University of Vienna, On Spectacle and Speculation. A Spanish Hospital in Pandemic Times

H10:55-11:15 – Andri Tschudi, Graduate Institute Geneva, Profitable Medicine: An Ethnographic Approach to Corporate Hospital Care in India (cancelled)

H10:55-11:15 – Discussion

H11:15-11:45 – Keynote: Mathilde Bourrier, University of Geneva, What type of organization is the hospital?

H11:45-12:00 – Q&A

H12:00-14:30  Break

Panel 4: Hospital architecture
Moderation: Britta Hentschel, University of Liechtenstein

The hospital is not always a single architectural object: indeed, this is the exception rather than the rule. As the hospital as an institution evolves in response to technological and social change, it changes physical form as well. As buildings and wings are added, subtracted or repurposed, the hospital often transforms into a kind of precinct or city-within-a-city. Nonetheless, the exceptions—hospitals conceived as architecturally unified complexes—constitute some of the most ambitious projects in contemporary architecture. This panel seeks to clarify the intersection of medical science, distributed risk, digital design and contemporary logistics in the current praxis of hospital architecture.

H14:30-14:50 – Stanislaus von Moos, Zurich, The Hospital Outside-In. A Survey

H14:50-15:10 – David Theodore, McGill University, Hospital Design in 1970: The Future Strikes Back

H15:10-15:30 – Discussion

H15:30-15:50 – Mona Farag; Emanuel Christ, Christ&Gantenbein, The hospital and the city – Healthcare beyond functionalism

H15:50-16:20 – Reinier de Graaf, OMA, The Hospital of the Future

H16:20-16:40 – Discussion