Mattijs Alsem

Between 2003 and 2010 Mattijs studied Medicine at Utrecht University. In 2011 he started as a resident in Rehabilitation Medicine in De Hoogstraat Revalidatie and UMC Utrecht. Already during his medical training, Mattijs was interested in doing research. During his residency he started his research on the topic of family centred care and parental empowerment in paediatric rehabilitation medicine. In 2015 this project was turned into a PhD-candidacy. In January 2016 Mattijs finished his traineeship and in February of that year he started working as a paediatric rehabilitation physician in the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. During that time he finished his PhD thesis at the Centre of excellence for rehabilitation medicine in Utrecht. In june 2018 he defended his PhD Thesis called ‘Family Needs and the role of information in paediatric rehabilitation care’. In november he received the PhD thesis award from the Netherlands Society of Rehabilitation Medicine. He is currently involved in various research projects in paediatric rehabilitation, especially focusing on parental empowerment, self-management support and family integrated care. Involving parents and working together with parents and children is one of the cornerstones of his daily work in research and patient care.