National Representative
Corina Barbaros

National Representative
Shishta Nadda Basu

National Representative
Eva Bitzer

National Representative
Beverley Bolton

National Representative
Marianne Brouwers

National Representative
Carma Bylund

National Representative - Deputy
Annelies Decloedt
After graduation as an equine veterinarian in 2008, I completed a PhD at Ghent University in the field of equine cardiology, with a focus on new techniques for echocardiography. Since 2012, I worked as a postdoctoral research fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders. In 2015, I was appointed as assistant professor in veterinary clinical and communication skills at Ghent University. With regard to clinical skills, I was responsible for the development of the skills laboratory which was introduced in 2016. I also developed the communication skills curriculum for the veterinary students, consisting of lectures and practical exercises including peer role play and role play with simulated clients. My research topic of interest is veterinarian-client communication, in particular challenges encountered during daily consultations such as dealing with questions about alternative medicine or motivating clients.

National Representative - Deputy
Catherine Delguste
Catherine graduated as a veterinarian from the University of Liege in 1999. She first worked as a field vet in France for one year, before coming back to the University as an assistant. She became an ECEIM diplomate (European College of Equine Internal Medicine) in 2007, and completed a PhD-thesis in 2008 in the field of equine clinical pharmacology. In 2012, she got a complementary degree in universitary education and became in charge of veterinary undergraduates competencies development, with a focus on EBM, clinical reasoning and soft skills development. In this position, she has been involved in the development of communication activities in the veterinary curriculum, in the clinical internships, and in various postgraduate education programs for healthcare professionals, in collaboration with psychologists of the University.

National Representative
Nicola Diviani

National Representative
Eva Doherty

National Representative
Margarida Figueiredo-Braga
Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, completed a Ph.D. at FMUP in 2009 I have worked as a psychiatrist in S Marcos Hospital of Braga and presently in private practice, and I have been certified as Psychotherapist and Psychotherapist Supervisor in Cognitive-Behavioural Psychotherapy since 2000. As a teacher, I am responsible for curricular units at the post graduate level and I also teach and supervise medical students in Clinical Communication and Medical Psychology. My research includes health professionals’ communication skills, communication skills teaching programs, motivational interviewing, shared decision making and the impact of clinical communication in health and e-health.

National Representative - Deputy
Andrea Gaisser

National Representative
Conor Gilligan

National Representative - Deputy
Lauren Hamel

National Representative
Magdalena Horodeńska

National Representative
Brynja Ingadottir

National Representative
Michael Kaffman

National Representative - Deputy
Orit Karnieli-Miller

National Representative - Deputy
Aengus Kelly

National Representative
Jesus Gonzalez Lama
Research representative of the Spanish Group of Communication in Healthcare

National Representative
Gunnar Marden

National Representative
Emanuela Mazza
Mother of four children, with a degree in Literature, Emanuela Mazza is a professor in Medical-Patient Communication at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome and for many other Continuing Education in Medicine programs for Health Professionals. PCC - Professional Certified Coach by ICF, National Representative of EACH - International Association for Communication in Healthcare and NLP Master Trainer. In 2019 she started with Robert Dilts the SFM for Healthcare study. Emanuela is also the author of various books, written to remember her experiences and share them with others including When you wake up. History of a liver transplant, an autobiographical story that traces the history of her disease and The doctor-patient relationship identified not as an optional side dish of the health professions, but rather as a central element of the therapeutic path. She defines herself halfway between a traveler and an explorer. Her life purpose is to create value by giving back what she has received.

National Representative
Julia Menichetti

National Representative
Chiaki Mishima

National Representative - Deputy
Marie Morris

National Representative - Deputy
Noelle Junod Perron

National Representative - Deputy
Gitte Thybo Pihl
I am a lecturer at the Bachelor of Nursing Programme and affiliated to the research department at University College Lillebaelt. My research interest is about shared decision making, patient centered care and empowerment. In my PhD I have been conducting a mixed methods study about informational needs and decision making in the context of a multicentre trial testing for non-specific effects of the BCG vaccine. My focus was on parental decisions about a vaccine - barriers, considerations and informational needs. The concept ‘lay epidemiology’ caught my interest as it described the complexity in the parents’ decision in contrast to the health professionals’ decision.

National Representative - Deputy
Pierluigi Politi

National Representative - Deputy
Maria Grazia Rossi

National Representative - Deputy
Maria Gomez Salado

National Representative
Marlene Sator
Marlene Sator, PhD, linguist with a special focus on healthcare communication, professional communication trainer and psychotherapist in training under supervision. Worked as a researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of Bielefeld University, at University of Vienna in cooperation with Vienna General Hospital and at Heidelberg University Hospital, where she was involved in curriculum development and faculty development as well as teaching and research in the field of healthcare communication. At Heidelberg University, she coordinated the development of a national, longitudinal communication skills curriculum for undergraduate medical education. Since 2014 at the Austrian Public Health Institute, Department of Health and Society (Gesundheit Österreich GmbH). Within the Austrian Platform Health Literacy she is involved in implementing a national strategy for improving healthcare communication in Austria. Since 2016 National Representative of Austria for EACH.

National Representative
Anna Serkina

National Representative
Maria Stubbe

National Representative
Abdulsalam Sultan
EXPERIENTIAL Teaching and LEARNING Facilitator: Sultan has introduced experiential learning into Iraqi medical teaching environment by producing for the first time dozens of video recording interviews with simulated and real patients and analyzing them with a new technique (Agenda Led Outcome Based Analysis, ALOBA) in his training the trainers courses and workshops since 2007 till now.

National Representative - Deputy
Vibeke Sundling

National Representative
Birgitte Tørring
Birgitte Tørring is an Educational Consultant at The Post Graduate Education Department (act2learn) at University College of Northern Denmark. In 2018 she completed her PhD in Health Services Research at Aalborg University, Faculty of Medicine focused on communication and relationships in surgical team and relational coordination dynamics at the microlevel during change processes in an organization.  The PhD. study is a mixed methods study including ethnographic fieldwork and an organizational intervention process intended to improve relational coordination in the operating room and to investigate the impact on the safety culture. Birgitte has worked for 19 years as consultant, teacher, and coach at act2learn with a special focus on training communication skilss, improving health care, and improving interdisciplinary collaboration in hospital units as well as in primary care. Furthermore, Birgitte has contributed to the development and establishment of patient-centered communication training programs for health professionals and implemented these programs in order to strengthen health professionals’ skills to cope with challenging communication situations. Birgitte has a background as Critical Care Nurse and has for several years worked as manager in an Intensive Care Unit at Aalborg University Hospital. She has a master’s degree in Humanities and Health Studies from Aarhus University.

Chair of the Advisory Committee & Chair of the Networking Committee
Lode Verreyen
Lode was trained as physiotherapist and works as such in a large multidisciplinary private practice in Antwerp. He also was assistant at the department of Family Medicine and Primary Health Care of the Ghent University. There he was teaching communication to undergraduates of medicine, dentistry, and physiotherapy. He also was responsible for the training program of simulated patients. Within tEACH he is co-lead, together with Prof. Katrien Bombeke, of the Work Place Based Teaching Tips group.

National Representative - Deputy
Liesbeth Van Vliet

National Representative
Andy Ward

National Representative
Alan Weber
Dr. Alan S. Weber, PhD, has taught literature and the Medical Humanities–including the history, philosophy and sociology of medicine, narrative medicine, communications in healthcare, and Islamic Medical Ethics–through writing intensive courses at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar for the past fourteen years. He has held previous appointments at Cornell University, the State University of New York, and the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of a widely used textbook on the history of science and medicine, 19th Century Science (2000) and managed the history of science journal Isis. He has published over 140 articles, books, and book chapters in a wide variety of fields, including e-learning, healthcare communications, education, literature and medical history. He has directed a number of narrative medicine and medical humanities projects in Qatar at the national level, including a public brochure on Health Website Reliability, an Arabic/English book of patient education cancer survivor stories for the Qatar Cancer Society, a QNRF nationally-funded research project on Literature and Medicine, six volumes of medical student essay writing, and the first cross-disciplinary Art and Medicine undergraduate course in the Persian Gulf (with Stephen Scott, M.D.). He conducted an interventional educational trial on the use of graphic novels in medical ethics teaching in 2015. He has organized and Co-Directed seven ACCME-accredited workshops on integrating the health humanities into clinical practice at WCM-Q. He has delivered Grand Rounds in Healthcare Communication at Hamad General Hospital, the largest public hospital in Qatar. He was the lead organizer of the 1st International Conference on the Medical Humanities in the Middle East (http://qatar-weill.cornell. edu/event/medical-humanities-in-the-middle-east/committee /profile/alan-s-weber) and also organized two national conferences on the teaching of English in Qatar in 2009-2010. His research on Internet Health websites in the Middle East won first prize in 2015 in the Qatar National Research Fund’s annual research competition, and he serves as the Qatar National Representative for the International Association for Communication in Healthcare (EACH). He has also published base-line studies on medical education, provider-patient relations and communication in Qatar. He contributed a chapter to a collection that won the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the U.S. National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). He is the Lead Organizer and Committee Chair for the First International Conference on Healthcare Communications in the Middle East (November, 2020).

National Representative - Deputy
Sarah J White