Zara R. Stisen graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Copenhagen in 2015. Postgraduate she has completed basic clinical training (KBU) and established herself as an ambitious clinician with a strong clinical background working with patients in internal medicine, surgery and anesthesia.
In recent years, Zara has immersed herself in many different aspects of clinical research and through this gained insight and inspiration for her research at the Parker Institute. She is preoccupied with the importance of seeing and treating not just the disease but also ‘the whole person’ and therefore involving the patient’s concerns and thoughts in everyday life with a chronic disease in the treatment strategy.
Her PhD project, “Optimal disease management supported by factors of importance when defining quality of life in patients with spondyloarthritis and associated immune-mediated inflammatory diseases – seen from a patient’s perspective”, seeks to explore aspects that will help ensure optimal disease management in patients with spondyloarthritis as well as other immune-mediated inflammatory diseases.
The studies hypothesize that integrating subjective values and preferences (personomics) with detailed immunophenotyping (precision medicine) facilitates a more comprehensive and personalized care of patients with chronic spondyloarthritis, and the studies incorporated in her thesis will therefore be a conceptual proof of combination of qualitative & translational research – paradigms previously regarded as incommensurable.
Alongside her PhD studies, Zara works with senior researcher Tanja Schjødt Jørgensen in Value Based Outcomes Unit.