Loes van Bokhoven | Professor
Congratulations to Loes van Bokhoven, who has been appointed as professor last May 1st, 2023!
Loes van Bokhoven studied medicine in Maastricht. She then combined her specialization to become a general practitioner with doctoral research on the implementation of a wait-and-see policy in recent unexplained physical complaints in general practice. Even now, she continues to combine scientific research with patient care and teaching Medicine students. In all three, promoting interprofessional collaboration and learning in primary care is her focus.
Congratulations to Loes van Bokhoven, who has been appointed as professor last May 1st, 2023!
Loes van Bokhoven studied medicine in Maastricht. She then combined her specialization to become a general practitioner with doctoral research on the implementation of a wait-and-see policy in recent unexplained physical complaints in general practice. Even now, she continues to combine scientific research with patient care and teaching Medicine students. In all three, promoting interprofessional collaboration and learning in primary care is her focus.
After all, primary care is changing. Developments such as increasing extramuralization, demographic trends, a more resilience-oriented approach to health, a greater need for autonomy on the part of citizens and higher demands placed on them by society are leading to increasingly complex care issues. These cannot be answered by any single discipline. GPs have therefore included (interprofessional) collaboration as a fourth core value for their discipline. However, there are several knowledge gaps how to apply this in primary care practice and education, such as the optimal role of the GP in a team, the promotion of the most independent role of the patient with complex health problems and the learning of interprofessional competencies by future health care providers, during their internships in primary care.
In her research, Loes uses participatory research methods in which general practitioners, researchers, professionals from other disciplines, patients and their loved ones work together to ensure that the results are well aligned with what daily practice needs. The inspiration for the research projects mostly comes from the issues in her work as a practicing GP in Elsloo. The Elsloo Care Network, of which she is president, often serves as a living lab, where issues in research, education and care innovation are addressed in an integrated way, under the motto "Working together, learning together, better together".
As a member of the Redesign Team of the new bachelor's program in Medicine, which launched last September, she brings her interprofessional expertise to the curriculum design, so that students of Medicine are prepared from the beginning for their future work, in which good interprofessional collaboration is essential.