Creating a culture of cooperation and sustainable organisations

Yvonne Gilli discusses her vision for health leadership, her Sciana experience, and changes she would like to see in health care in Switzerland

Yvonne Gilli is a medical doctor specialising in general medicine and has further training in homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, and body psychotherapy. Since 1996, she has had her own medical office in Wil SG. Since 2017, she has been a senior consultant at the psychotherapeutic outpatient clinic IBP in Winterthur, ZH. She is the president of the Board of Trustees at Sexual Health Switzerland and President of the Swiss Medical Association. 

Since 2017, she has also been a lecturer in sexual health and rights at the University of Lucerne and, since 2018, in public health at the University of Zurich. Yvonne is a member of the Green Party and was a member of the National Council of Switzerland's Committees for Science, Education, and Culture, Social Security and Health, and Finance. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Swiss Medical Association and a former member of the Swiss Parliament between 2007 and 2015. She is a member of Sciana's third cohort.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Sciana spoke with Yvonne during her cohort's final meeting in May 2022.

Sciana Network: What is your vision for health leadership?

Yvonne Gilli: The theme my [working] group started working with is compassion. It is really an issue in my life, and I think that has a close connection to my biographical background. I grew up in a socially deprived working-class family. That gives me a strong connection with vulnerable groups in our society, and that fits also with my profession as a doctor. 

I chose this profession out of interest concerning science but also humanism. I can connect this theme of compassion with a humanistic philosophy. Where do you get this compassion? You get it through relations with other human beings, perhaps if we think of planetary health as an intergenerational subject also in relation [to] other beings and nature or the planet itself. It's this circle and frame that really brings me to an understanding of leadership. That needs to move towards a sustainable form of an organisation, but also in human society. This means in a health network that everybody has access to decent health care as well.

SN: You work as a medical doctor, as a lecturer, and also as the president of the Swiss Medical Association. So, how do these roles connect or relate to each other? And how has each role been impacted by the Sciana programme?

YG: Having experience in different roles is a privilege; it broadens my horizon because of the different encounters you have. You have very different partners. If you lecture at the university, if you lead the Swiss doctors in their different personalities and their different functions, and as a medical doctor in contact with the patients, it's worthwhile not forgetting that society really consists of many different roles. There is no successful leadership when you are not able also to at least listen to different perspectives. In the organisation you lead, you will have a lot of different people with different backgrounds, and leading them means not just listening to them. It means also having an authentic understanding of them. You meet them as human to human, not defined by the role you have. 

It's a contribution I can give to the Sciana Network as well, having experience in different roles. Being a lecturer is also a leadership role. I can be a role model, especially as a woman, and by now, as an elderly woman. I find that quite interesting because these are still two vulnerable sides in many societies. I enjoy being in this position and sharing my experience, but also learning from other experiences from students. This means intergenerational work from students, how they care for their surroundings, for their career plans, and for their own wellbeing in the future.

SN: What have you learned from being part of the Sciana programme over the past three years? What do you hope you've shared with others? What do you hope you've imparted to other participants? 

YG: What I got from Sciana goes further than just learning; it's inspiration. Without inspiration, you can't be compassionate, and you will never get compassion and inspiration from reading or studying. You'll get it from meeting people. I think it's quite courageous in times we face now having such a network that has a truly humanistic mission. That mission, we need it more now than 20 years ago. 

I also got quite a concrete advantage from the network. For example, leading people like Ilona Kickbusch and like Thomas Zeltner were always reachable and available for me. In hard times, I really got in contact with them to get their advice for my role in Switzerland. On the other hand, there's the trust and sustainable relationship, at least within the Swiss group and by working together in the Sciana Network.

SN: Over and above the COVID-19 pandemic, why are networks such as Sciana important for healthcare professionals?

YG: First, it is really to share experiences and to have access to scientific material. It's the product of synthesis, of having the knowledge of experienced leadership and from people in different cultures. That's very important as well because that's a global issue. 

It's not just an issue of one country. You get a lot of not only inspiration but also knowledge from all the cultures. In a crisis, you realise you are not alone. We face the same challenges, and for me, that was especially true during COVID-19. I think we urgently need a lot of reflection and evaluation from this crisis. We can do that now over three nations and in this network. That really broadens my horizons. 

Before COVID-19, we didn't establish a good enough culture of cooperation between politics, science, and clinical medicine. Health networks combine this knowledge and bring the three together. We will profit from a more trustful culture. 

Some mistakes we made in Switzerland were made in other countries as well. We can learn how to proceed and how we cope with these learnings. Besides the whole health issues, societal issues such as polarisation and nationalism affect health as well; we urgently need a common approach to work and to co-create as a society. 

SN: What are some of the specific changes that you'd like to see in healthcare in Switzerland?

YG: One is concerning evaluation. We are about to evaluate the three systems we had during the pandemic. We established guidelines in intensive care that worked quite well. But what happened was [that] we forgot about guidelines that protected people from being affected by the postponement of regular treatments and operations and the transfer from elderly residences to the hospital or from the hospital to central hospitals within intensive care units. 

The second thing is to develop the organisations. If I take the Swiss Medical Association as the biggest association in health in Switzerland, that's an organisation [founded] at the end of the 19th century. The structure of the organisation still stays the same, and that can't be sustainable for the future, so we really have to reform these organisations. 

Being here in a network and with many other leaders facing the same challenges gives me a lot of ideas to carry forward this reorganisation and restructuring of these organisations so they are sustainable for the future.