BLOG – New INTERDEM Academy fellowship – Joni Gilissen

I am delighted to announce that I was awarded the Spring 2017 INTERDEM Academy fellowship. This fellowship allows early stage researchers to spend 3-6 months abroad at another PRIDE or INTERDEM site and is used for the exchange of knowledge and experience regarding dementia research and allows talented young researchers to build their own research network.

Since two years I am working on a research project funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) regarding “Advance care planning in nursing homes: a cluster randomised controlled trial”, supervised by Prof Dr Lieve Van den Block and Dr Lara Pivodic, within the End-of-Life Care Research Group (Vrije University Brussels & Ghent University, Belgium). We are performing this research to understand not just whether, but also how and why advance care planning has a particular effect on patient and family outcomes, and which parts of advance care planning have the greatest impact on these outcomes.

This fellowship will enable me to spend three months with Prof Dr Myrra Vernooij-Dassen (Scientific Institute for Quality of Healthcare) and Dr Yvonne Engels (Department of Anaesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine) from the Radboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands. The purpose of this visit is to exchange expertise and experience specifically on the challenges in dementia research, difficulties and safeguards to involve people living with dementia in mixed-methods intervention research, the use of specific measurements to evaluate patient outcomes and to finalise my study protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial and an in-depth process evaluation of advance care planning in nursing homes. This close collaboration will result in a scientific paper and will strengthen future ties of collaboration between both departments. In addition, this is a unique opportunity to create an exceptionally strong stepping stone for my future career in research on ageing, dementia and end-of-life care.