About
Prof. dr. Debby L. Gerritsen is a gero-psychologist and has a chair in wellbeing of frail elderly people and people with chronic illnesses in long-term care (as of April 1st 2019). Her research is about identifying problems in and opportunities for quality of life of and quality of care for nursing home residents, developing (multidisciplinary) interventions to address these and evaluate the effects of these interventions and their implementation. The aim is to not only solve problems, but to contribute to optimal well-being, based on a needs approach to well-being and challenging. For instance, her group developed and evaluated (the implementation of) interventions for depression and apathy, for challenging behavior, and for psychotropic drugs using innovative methodology. Furthermore, her work includes the development and validation of measurement instruments for these concepts in the frail nursing home population.
Gerritsen works at the department of Primary and Community Care and the Radboudumc Alzheimer Center of the Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. More specifically, she is board member of UKON, the University Knowledge network for Older adult care Nijmegen (www.ukonnetwerk.nl). In this network, researchers and professionals cooperate to increase quality of care and quality of life by acquiring scientific knowledge and adopting this in daily practice.
Declaration of Interests:
Gerritsen has received funding from The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development and the Dutch Alzheimer’s association.