Dutch Society for Personalised Care; Netherlands

When my father was diagnosed with bowel cancer nearly half a century ago and needed a stoma (Shared Decision-Making didn’t exist yet), he didn’t dare talk about it. That changed when someone from the stoma association came to visit him, opened up a conversation, and even showed him their own stoma. It was a revelation for both him and me.

That experience became my motivation to work for patient organizations after studying andragogy. At the same time, I wanted to do more to improve healthcare, so I started training healthcare managers at HAN University of Applied Sciences.

To this day—even after my retirement—it’s my mission to bring these two worlds a little closer together. As a caregiver and patient representative, I’m a member of the Patient Advisory Board at Radboudumc and of the Society for Personalized Healthcare.